


(Vis)count on me

by LoveRun



Series: Divergence of Elves [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Pining, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:10:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26110123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveRun/pseuds/LoveRun
Summary: post-series one, Geralt and Ciri are taken captive in Lettenhove and handed over to Viscount Julian for judgement.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Divergence of Elves [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1929298
Comments: 130
Kudos: 356





	1. Years to Build

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this Tumblr post: https://witchertrashbag.tumblr.com/post/626740146419761152/spielzeugkaiser-what-is-happening-here-j
> 
> i'm not sorry for the terrible pun that is the title

The Alderman didn’t look at Geralt, choosing instead to slowly read through the charges again. Geralt supposed this was for his benefit, an attempt to intimidate him and make him squirm as he waited. As it was, the only thing the Witcher felt was mild surprise that the man could read through such a complicated document without mouthing the words to himself.  
  
After a pause long enough that Geralt began contemplating a short meditation to pass the time, the Alderman finally looked up and fixed the Witcher with a stare that might have been scary if it wasn’t coming from a child. To Geralt’s eyes – not that he was a great judge of these things – the man looked about twelve, though that couldn’t be right. He must, however, have been quite new to the job – the links on his chain of office had not had time to become tarnished yet.  
  
“Since our gracious Viscount Julian’s mage honoured me with the title of Alderman… never in all that time…” What, the last five minutes? Geralt wanted to ask, but forced himself to hold his tongue. “…Never have I seen such a list of crimes!”  
  
The Alderman rose and paced the short length of the room behind his desk. Geralt remained still. He could, he knew, rise and take out this lad – this overgrown cock hair, he couldn’t help but think (spending time with Yarpen Zigrin meant resigning yourself to picking up certain idioms that, once they had burrowed into your mind, refused to be excised). He could also take out the two guards standing by the door, he was sure. The soldiers held halberds, but held them like a king held a scythe – uncomfortably, and with no idea what to do with it. They would pose no problem.  
  
Yes, Geralt could do all of this… if it weren’t for the dimeritium cuffs that circled his wrists and ankles. On top of these, they had bound him practically head to foot with rope. The way the bindings shone in the light showed that the rope was interwoven with fine strands of more dimeritium. The metal made the use of Signs impossible. Geralt might be able to force his way out of the restraints with his strength alone, but he didn’t want to test that in front of anyone. It might take a while, and would be impossible to do without being noticed. With a sigh, he resigned himself to waiting.  
  
The child was still caterwauling.  
  
“Five men, dead! Eight merchants’ carts upturned, one of them a cart carrying eggs to the city, not one of which was intact by the end of your rampage! Fifteen sacks of flour split and their contents thrown to the winds! What am I to make of all this?!”  
  
Geralt shrugged as much as he could within his bindings.  
  
“If you add water you could make some Pierogi?”  
  
The Alderman strode over and hit Geralt with a fully wound backhand. It didn’t hurt, much, but the boy’s signet ring split Geralt’s lip as it passed. Geralt spat blood and probed his lip with his tongue, swearing at the size of the gash. It would be days before it healed.  
  
Geralt had to find a way to talk himself out of this, somehow.  
  
Talking is not his strong point.  
  
Once upon a time, of course, he’d had someone who was good with words, and who put that talent to good use by talking Geralt out of trouble more times than he could count…  
  
Stop. Forget.  
  
Talking is not his strong point. But he’ll have to try.  
  
“It was self-defence,” he began.  
  
“Self-defence?! Pull the other one, Witcher, it’s got bells on. I have here...” The child brandished a handful of papers at him, “No fewer than six eye witness accounts stating that you started the fight.”  
  
Geralt grunted. “Pre-emptive self-defence. I heard them in the tavern where I ate a meal before the… incident. They were planning to jump me in the alley outside. So I jumped them first.”  
  
The Alderman spluttered. “You heard them? That’s convenient. Did anyone else hear them, that they can corroborate your claim? No? I thought as much.”  
  
Geralt didn’t try to explain that only someone with Witcher senses could have heard the whispered scheme across a crowded room. It wouldn’t help.  
  
“And even if they were planning on ambushing you, why would you happily walk out into said trap? Why wouldn’t you stay in the inn, wait them out? Or ask one of the local constables for help?”  
  
“And who would help a Witcher?” Geralt asked.  
  
It was true. Lettenhove was one of the most hostile places Geralt had been in in over a decade. Attitudes towards him had thawed considerably in the last ten years or so, but that particular trend seemed to have passed this charming area by.  
  
The Alderman waved away Geralt’s question as though it were not even worth considering.  
  
“Well, no one now. I doubt anyone on the Continent will speak for you.  
  
“Your crimes are so heinous that I’ve got no choice but to take this higher. I’m not authorised to dispense the kind of punishment that your misdemeanours demand. You will be sentenced by the Viscount de Lettenhove himself. Get this wretch out of my sight.”  
  
Geralt was all too pleased to be taken away from this fool who seemed to think that swallowing a thesaurus was the same as being clever. He was hauled to his feet by one of the guards who didn’t know how to use a halberd and pushed unceremoniously through the door. He groaned at what he saw in the corridor.  
  
Ciri was manacled too, though they’d not bothered to tie her as they had Geralt. He was glad that they had dyed her hair brown, its natural grey-blonde much too easily recognisable. Her reptile-green eyes were wide and terrified, staring at him with an indisputable plea: help me.  
  
Geralt cursed. He’d hoped Ciri would have been able to escape in the confusion of the melee, that she’d hide somewhere on the outskirts of town and wait for him to find her once he’d managed to escape. Now he’d have to break both of them out… somehow.  
  
Ciri ran to him, clutched at his arm. “I’m sorry, I tried to run but they caught me…” was all she got out before a soldier pulled her roughly away.  
  
“Hey, leave off! She’s just a kid. It’s okay, Fiona. You didn’t do anything wrong.”  
  
They were both manhandled down the corridor to the back door and bundled into a cart with a closed-off top. At least they would be safe from being pelted with rotten vegetables and worse on their trip to the Viscount’s house, Geralt reflected, though the lack of openings meant that they were in the pitch black. Ciri’s hands were tied in front of her, allowing her to reach for Geralt for the little comfort that gave her. Geralt’s hands were tied behind his back, so that all he could do was shush and reassure her as she cried and sniffled against his ropes. He cursed himself yet again for his uselessness.  
  
“Ciri… try and undo the knots, will you?” he asked once she’d cried herself out. She nodded, still sniffing, and felt along the restraints until she found a knot. Her fingers, still soft from the life of a princess, scrabbled ineffectively at the tangle of rope. She let out a grunt of frustration and lowered her face to the knot, her breath hot on his skin as she tried to gain purchase with her teeth.  
  
Geralt pulled away sharply. “No, Ciri. There’s metal in the rope, it’ll break your teeth before you undo it.”  
  
Geralt’s enhanced sight means he can just make out Ciri’s nod, the miserable set of her face as she admits defeat.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.  
  
Geralt should be saying that to her. It’s his job to look after her, but he’s let her be captured. This was the reason he’d left her in Cintra for so long; he knew he’d cause nothing but trouble for his Child Surprise, and here is the proof that he was right. She didn’t need someone like him ruining her life. He’d been so selfish to insert himself into her days like this.  
  
He pushes away this feeling. It’s not productive. He has to work out how to escape.  
  
Before he can formulate any sort of plan, their transport has stopped. A few seconds later hands are pulling them from the dark, making Ciri blink in the light as Geralt hastily reduces his pupil size. The guards pull him so hard and quickly that he loses his footing, unable to save himself with hands that are still bound behind his back. He hits the floor with a grunt, and they give him no time to recover before dragging him upright.  
  
Geralt looks around carefully. They seem to be in a small courtyard outside the back entrance of a medium-to-large stately home. He catches a glimpse of some sort of coat of arms, a weather-worn carving above the door before he’s hustled inside.  
  
Geralt takes note of all their twists and turns as they are led through a labyrinth of corridors and rooms. He needs to be able to find his own way out, possibly while fighting, once he’s managed to get out of these bonds.  
  
They pass a ridiculous number of bustling servants, pages, scribes and miscellaneous hangers-on as they are whisked through the house. Geralt catches sight of a child, puffed up with self-importance as they run to deliver a message written on paper that’s become crumpled in their plump little fist. He sees a blonde maid, smiling with only her mouth as she deflects a lascivious comment from a soldier with a barb of her own. A butler, striding unhurriedly but purposefully in the opposite direction with a very good bottle of wine in his hands. A man with a burn on his face closing a door, looking the opposite way to Geralt. Geralt’s medallion gives a warning hum against his sternum as the ozone-smell of magic reaches his nose. This man is a mage, then. The smell and medallion-hum are cut off as the door closes on the sorcerer.  
  
The furnishings of the rooms have been getting gradually more sumptuous as they have progressed; flagstone floors are now carpeted with thick rugs, bare walls are now hung with warm wooden panelling and tapestries. Tasteful artworks and sculptures are displayed in alcoves and recesses in the walls, whisked away before Ciri can get a good look though she cranes her neck to see them better. She must be starved for beautiful things, Geralt realises, used to palaces and luxury as she is. Things a Witcher can’t give her. His stomach twists guiltily again.  
  
Finally, one last set of doors opens in front of them. Geralt and Ciri are pushed to their knees in front of an ornately-carved chair that Geralt can only assume holds the Viscount de Lettenhove. Geralt keeps his eyes low, knowing beyond a doubt that their yellow hue won’t be helpful.  
  
“What have you brought me now, Captain? I’m busy.” The Viscount’s voice is cold, detached, and bored. It’s also… familiar.  
  
“Forgive me, Viscount Julian. The Alderman sends you this villain and his accomplice, begging you to pass sentence on them as their crimes are too grievous for him to judge himself.”  
  
“And what are these crimes?”  
  
Geralt glances up briefly. The Viscount is turned mostly away, examining his nails in the light that enters through a large window behind his chair.  
  
“Five counts of murder, damage to town property, destruction of a cart’s worth of eggs and ten sacks of flour…”  
  
“Fifteen,” Geralt corrects. His interruption earns him a kick from the soldier behind him. From the corner of his eye he sees the Viscount’s head snap around to look at him on hearing the gruff sound of Geralt’s voice, but the blossoming pain in his kidney means he can’t pay attention to the Lord in front of him. Ciri gasped when she saw him get hit, and Geralt curses himself. Why didn’t he keep his fucking mouth shut?  
  
“None of your insolence, mutant!” the Captain demands.  
  
Mutant. It had been several months since Geralt had heard that one. In fact, it had been becoming less and less frequent over the last ten years or so, ever since that song…  
  
Geralt stopped that thought in its tracks, forcing himself to forget that the thought had begun in the first place. People called him a mutant. They always had, always would. It wasn’t important.  
  
“Fifteen sacks of flour,” the soldier corrects himself as if nothing had happened, “and minor injuries to three innocent bystanders.”  
  
“Well. That’s almost impressive. Seems we’ve got a real butcher on our hands.” the Viscount says. Geralt coughs, curses, and looks up at this upstart little shit of a regional Lord.  
  
For a moment, he thinks he’s been kicked again.  
  
From his chair, Viscount Julian de Lettenhove stares down at him with cornflower-blue eyes. Those eyes stand out brightly against dark brown hair and the expensive but functional black clothes the Viscount is wearing.  
  
“Jaskier?!” Geralt can’t help but gasp.  
  
He really is kicked again for that.  
  
“You will address him as My Lord, or Viscount Julian!” The soldier shouts as he kicks Geralt again. Ciri is crying, struggling to reach Geralt where he lies but she’s held back by another guard. Jaskier looks on with an impassive face.  
  
“Yes, I suppose I was going by that name when we last crossed paths, Witcher. Don’t think that a prior passing acquaintance will do you any good, however. Not after what you’ve done on my lands. And the Captain of the Guard is right. I go by Viscount Julian now. My real name.”  
  
Geralt coughs and manages to sit up.  
  
“Jas… Viscount Julian.”  
  
Jaskier keeps his gaze on Geralt for a moment. His eyes flick to Ciri, then return to his nails as he reclines in his chair, apparently bored once more.  
  
“Throw them in the cells for now. As I said, I’m busy. I’ll deal with them later. Once I’m done with more important matters.”  
  
More important matters… Geralt remembers a time, several times in fact, when Jaskier literally dropped everything to follow him into the woods on the vaguest promise of something interesting. A time when Geralt had been important. When he had mattered.  
  
It seems that time has passed.  
  
Geralt is heaved upright, hears Ciri being set on her feet too. As he is marched from the room, he twists his neck to get one last glimpse of the bard… or ex-bard now, he supposes.  
  
Just before the door closes between them, Jaskier looks up and Geralt catches the slightest flicker of his expression. Then he’s being shoved along a corridor and down steep stone steps that have the reek of damp rising from them.  
  
At the bottom of the stairs they have to pause for their escorts’ eyes to adapt to the gloom. Geralt’s eyes dark-adapt almost instantly, allowing him to surreptitiously look around. Twelve doors of thick wood line each side of the corridor that the steps let out onto. Each door has a panel at roughly head-height that can be slid to the side to allow the inhabitants to be observed. There are little trapdoors at the base of the doors for food trays to be slid into the cells.  
  
It’s a prison.  
  
“The Alderman wants his bindings back. These things are expensive. Besides, you should have more than enough here, with a resident mage.” The town guard tells the gaoler, who’s wearing what Geralt now recognises as the Lettenhove livery.  
  
“Fine,” the gaoler grumbles.  
  
The soldiers and gaoler approach Geralt carefully, one of them holding a blade to his throat as the other removes the dimeritium bands from his wrists before replacing them with a different set. In the instant when his wrists are free, despite the strands of dimeritium woven into the rope, Geralt feels much of his strength returning. He could burst through the rope – the effort would certainly wrench some muscles, maybe dislocate a thumb or break his wrist. But he would still be able to fight his way out of this, he’s sure.  
  
A memory stops him. The moment he’d looked at Jaskier, and Jaskier had looked at him, just before Geralt had been pulled into this dungeon… he wasn’t sure.  
He’d seen Jaskier wink thousands of time before. At a pretty person in a market. At the crowd as he performed. At a stall holder he was trying to flirt into submission while bartering over prices. But Jaskier had never winked at Geralt.  
  
Or had he?  
  
Geralt shouldn’t pay it any attention, of course. He should follow his instincts and fight his way out with Ciri, disappear into the countryside and get out of Redania as soon as possible.  
  
He got himself into this situation, he’d get himself out of it. He couldn’t count on anyone else to help him. Especially Jaskier. Especially after the mountain.  
Geralt knew this. But the moment where Jaskier’s gaze met his, the instant his left eye flickered closed, too quick for someone without Witcher reflexes to pick up on. The memory of that instant is enough to still Geralt’s hands until he feels the new dimeritium cuffs click closed around them. Geralt sags. His traitor body has apparently decided to trust Jaskier; it seems he has no choice but to follow its lead. The rope is replaced by one that is, if possible, even more sturdy and he is thrown into a cell. He hears Ciri get unceremoniously deposited into the one next to it.  
  
The locks click, an improbable number of bolts slide home and secure them in their cages. Then there is only silence.  
  
Silence, except for in the echo chamber of Geralt's mind which has one word bouncing endlessly back and fore, louder and louder as the echoes combine and resonate with the word Jaskier had uttered that Geralt had only heard him say once before, on the day they met, and never again: butcher.


	2. By Any Other Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt finds out that being a prisoner is not fun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not much plot in this one, just Geralt having a less-than-fun time. laying the groundwork, as Vesemir would say!

The hatch at the bottom of the cell door jerked open. An unseen hand shoves a tray of food into the cell. A moment later, Geralt hears the identical hatch on Ciri’s identical door open, makes out the grating of her tray of food scraping along the floor of her identical cell.

Geralt considers ignoring the food, but decides he can’t afford to. He’ll need to be in good shape to get himself and Ciri out of this mess, and starving himself won’t achieve that.

He gets up to examine the tray closely for any obvious signs of poison. It’s unlikely; if they wanted to kill him – if Jaskier wanted to kill him – he could have had his soldiers execute Geralt on the spot. Why go to the trouble of poisoning a meal?

Geralt’s surprised to see that the tray holds a lot of food; a large bowl of meat stew, most of a loaf of bread, a thick wedge of hard cheese and several apples. It’s almost enough to sate a Witcher’s appetite. Geralt’s mind flits back to Jaskier’s wink before he gets his thoughts in check.

Geralt still hasn’t replenished the energy he spent fighting the attempted robbers in the fight that started all this, let alone the reserves he’s used since then. He falls on the food, ravenous. At least they’d tied his hands in front of him this time, allowing him to eat his food without having to stick his face in it like a pig in a trough.

Once he’s eaten he lies down on the mouldy straw that is the cell’s attempt at a bed. He tries to sleep, but the carousel of memories and unanswered questions circling in his head won’t slow enough to let him. Then, through the silence that spreads like an oil slick through the cellar-jail, Geralt picks up the sound of Ciri’s stifled whimpers as she cries in the room next door.

Geralt feels each sob like it’s wracking through his whole body. It’s his fault she’s here, locked up like a sitting duck for Nilfgaard or some other state to snatch up and use as a pawn in their games of power. He shakes his head – she’d be a pawn if she’s lucky; many people would, if they found the Lioness of Cintra, take it upon themselves to end Calanthe’s line for good.

No.

A few weeks ago, after a nasty fight with a werewolf with very good hearing, Geralt had spent an afternoon teaching Ciri some non-verbal signals. They were useful when facing enemies with auditory senses acute enough to make any form of verbal communication dangerous. He remembered the pride he’d felt at the speed with which she’d picked up the signs that he’d only ever used with his brothers. He’d offered to show Yenn once, but she’d snorted and replied that, in the eventuality that she couldn’t listen to his voice, she could listen to his mind just as easily.

Only it hadn’t only been his brothers he’d communicated with like this, he realised. He’d also shown Jaskier.

Pushing that thought as far from himself as possible, Geralt reached out to the wall.

Onto someone’s arm: two taps in quick succession, followed by two more taps further apart. It meant: I’m here. He couldn’t reach her arm, but he could still convey the message to Ciri via the bricks between them. He just hoped she’d remember what it meant.

Ciri’s sobs were cut off with a gasp. Her breathing grew slightly heavier as she moved to the wall that separated them, then tapped her reply: three taps in quick succession, followed by a pause, then the three taps and pause repeated twice more. 

Geralt’s broke into a smile despite himself. That one wasn’t a Kaer Morhen original. It was too long and complex to be useful in battle, and in what other circumstances could such a communication be necessary? He’d taught it to Ciri anyway, of course, though he couldn’t bring himself to wonder why. He reached out and tapped the same pattern back to her: three quick taps and a pause, repeated three times in total.

Ciri’s breath slowed and calmed on hearing Geralt’s reply. He heard her settle herself as best she could on her own pile of straw, and soon her breathing had the slow rise-and-fall rhythm of sleep. Geralt’s burning eyes closed soon after.

He snapped to alertness after what felt like moments. Geralt automatically looked around for some clue as to how much time had passed, but there was nothing to give any indication. The bare grey stone of the walls, empty food tray and mouldy straw were the same as they had been when he’d closed his eyes. There was no helpful window to let in the passage of the sun, no candle burning down to hint at the hours as it diminished. He had heard the gaoler be relieved by the next person to take their shift, but after sleeping he had no idea how long ago that was.

He homed in on what had woken him: footsteps approaching. He held his breath to better hear as they grew nearer. He could hear at least five sets of feet, the sounds of their footsteps crowding and overlapping each other as the noise reverberated on the stone floors, walls and ceiling.

A frozen coil of dread curled in Geralt’s gut as what he had been dreading came to pass: the footsteps stopped outside his door, quickly followed by the sound of a key in the lock. He was only grateful that they had come for him, not Ciri.

His hearing had failed him. There were seven men in total, armed and holding their weapons in a way that suggested that the only thing that was stopping them from using the blades was their orders. Their facial expressions endeavoured to say that the hold that these orders had on them was gossamer-thin at best.

“Up you get, villain.” 

The man at the head of the group had a genial demeanour. Auburn hair framed a face that was perfectly normal: one nose, one mouth that was rather small and two brown eyes. 

Geralt had been around for a long time. Those eyes held a peculiar glint that he had seen before. Nothing good had come from someone whose eyes held that particular look.

Geralt rose, trying to look meek. Seven was too many to take on without his swords, or at least the use of all his limbs. But if he cooperated, masked his reactions and abilities, they might relax enough in their duties to give him a chance to escape later. Vesemir’s voice reverberated in his head: it’s never too soon to start laying the groundwork, wolfcub.

One of the other men came forward and held his blade to Geralt’s neck. Another loosened the dimeritium-woven bonds that encircled the Wolf’s body. Geralt, confused by this development – though by no means complaining – flexed his fingers and rolled his shoulders as the blood flow painfully restored itself to his muscles

He didn’t have long to enjoy the relative freedom before another of the guards thrust a soft bundle at him. 

Geralt took it and held up one of the pieces that made up the pile of cloth in his arms. It was a tunic of rough wool dyed a sickly yellow, still stained with the spillage of the last meal that whoever last wore it had eaten. The trousers were almost the same shade of off-lemon. There was also a white undershirt in one of the scratchiest materials Geralt had ever felt.

The lead soldier laughed at Geralt’s expression.

“You’re to put that on and hand over your own rags to be burned.”

Geralt dropped the clothes. “No.”

“Yes.”

The steel at his throat pressed closer. Geralt felt the wet heat against his skin that meant a trace of blood had been drawn. He could see it beading against the metal of the knife in his mind’s eye.

“I’m fine in my own clothes. Thank you.” Geralt smiled in an attempt to keep the peace, though it had rarely worked in the past.

“This is not your decision, prisoner. It’s Viscount Julian’s orders. You’ve probably got lice and all sorts all over you, he’ll not have you infesting his whole house before you’re put to death.”

Geralt frowned. Jaskier had ordered this? Why? 

Geralt looked down at the puddle of yellow fabric at his feet. Gritting his teeth, he reached down and picked up the shirt.

The soldiers gave him no privacy while changing, and he knew better than to ask. Geralt forced himself to hand over his Witcher black, unable to repress the memory of the last time he had worn something other than his signature jet. It had also been the last time Jaskier had picked his wardrobe, at Pavetta’s wedding feast in Cintra. Mousesack had said he’d looked like a sad silk trader.

He’d take that outfit over this one any day. Jaskier’s taste seems to be diminishing with age, for while he hadn’t liked the colour Geralt had at least appreciated the comfort of the sad silk trader costume. The untreated cloth of the yellow ensemble scraped against his skin as if determined to make him uncomfortable.

“Very good. I’ve just the accessory to complete your look. Boys!” the leader made an imperious gesture to his men, who jumped at the task of trussing Geralt like a turkey again in the dimeritium-enhanced rope. He held his hands out to be tied in front of him, only to have them thrust roughly behind him and secured behind his back. Fuck.

Assuming they were done, Geralt moved to sit back down.

“Oh no, sir, we’re not done with you yet. Follow me if you please.”

The unease in Geralt’s stomach began to grow. He had no choice but to follow the captain as he lead the way from the cell, flanked on all sides by the guards. 

Maybe it’ll be helpful, wherever they’re taking me, he reasoned to himself. Maybe I’ll be able to find a way out, or pick up a weapon or some other useful thing…

They weren’t taking him far enough to observe anything helpful, as it turned out. Geralt was led only as far as the end of the corridor to a tiny chamber that apparently acted as a break room for the guards. There was a small table with a deck of cards thrown down halfway through a game of Gwent. A bucket in the corner full of food scraps, probably collected from the remnants of the guards’ lunch ready to be tossed to the pigs, gifted the room a mouldy stench. Geralt wrinkled his nose at the slightly decayed smell. Apparently the men hadn’t bothered to carry the scraps up the stairs and to the sty for several days in a row. He peered around the rest of the room to distract himself from the sour odour of the bucket, but didn’t find much to help him. Four chairs, a fireplace with a kettle hanging over it, and a rack of hooks for the guards’ cloaks made up the entirety of the room’s features.

Geralt was roughly shoved down into one of the chairs. He grunted in displeasure when he saw one of the soldiers throw his Witcher black trousers and shirt on the fire, stirring them with a poker until they had crumbled to nothing.

“Much better. But clothes aren’t the only place where lice can flourish, are they Griveld?” 

One of the other soldiers, who until now had kept to the back of the group, sniggered. 

“You’re right, boss.”

“Well, we can’t have our guest being uncomfortable because of a bug infestation. Help him out, man!”

Griveld approached Geralt from behind. Geralt grew uneasy, but the way the dagger was still pressing itself against his windpipe as if trying to make friends told the Witcher that turning in his chair to see what he was doing would not be a smart move.

Griveld’s mission, however, became obvious when Geralt felt the straight razor make contact with his scalp.

“Hey!” he shouted, trying to jerk away from the blade’s touch. Several pairs of hands seized him and held him against the chair, the knife at his throat singing a line of pain across his skin where it finally pierced through to flesh.

Geralt forced himself to lean back and let himself be shaved. Long white strands fell about his shoulders and to the floor as the too-blunt razor rasped over his scalp. Griveld didn’t deign to use water or soap or anything else that might smooth his blade’s path over Geralt’s skin. The friction of metal against skin caused more of Geralt’s blood to be drawn, filling his nostrils with the distressing scent of his own hurt. 

The impulse to fight, to kill the thing that was attacking him grew steadily as more and more white hair drifted to the floor. It was instinct, born of years of training in Kaer Morhen and it took all of Geralt’s will power to battle the compulsion down.

Griveld’s razor lacked the sharpness to be efficient, and Geralt’s whole scalp had been scraped raw several times over before he stood back, satisfied. He clicked the razor closed and returned it to his belt before stooping to pick up Geralt’s fallen hair. He turned as he straightened, tossing the locks on the fire after the clothes. The acrid scent of burnt hair filled the room, further stoking Geralt’s instinctual need to fight.

He closed his eyes to gather himself, regain his control over his body and actions. He just needed an instant to be calm, to put himself back in command of his gestures.

It would have worked if the captain hadn’t chosen that moment to haul Geralt to his feet. Geralt hadn’t been expecting it and instinctively tried to throw off the hands of the person touching him. The captain stumbled and fell, grabbing at Geralt as the nearest thing to try and steady himself against. 

The guard’s tug threw off Geralt’s balance, and with his hands tied behind his back the Witcher could not right himself. He ended up falling headlong, hitting the slop bucket as he did so and somehow ending up with the pail upended on his chest as its rancid contents flowed over his body and face.

Geralt swore, spat out the foul liquid that flowed into his mouth the instant he opened his lips, and swore again. The soldiers were falling about laughing, in no rush to help him up again. The thin tunic and trousers offered no protection from the slops, which soaked through to the skin in an instant.

Geralt blinked and turned his head as something cold and gloopy oozed down his face towards his eye. He managed to turn himself onto his stomach, forcing himself not to retch.

Something dripped into the cut on his throat that the knife had made, causing it to sting anew. Geralt grimaced but made no sound.

Eventually the guards stopped laughing, growing bored of the sight of Geralt covered in gods-knew-what, and hauled him back to his cell. They offered him no opportunity to clean himself, and Geralt did not bother to ask. In his cell, he felt the substances he tried hard not to name dry and harden to an unpleasant crust on his skin and clothes. 

It wasn’t that bad. Food waste wasn’t even in the top ten most disgusting things he’d been coated in, he reassured himself. It’s not even in the top fifty. 

Usually, of course, he manages to clean it off before it actually dries onto him. He washes in a nearby stream, if he’s lucky. With handfuls of snow, sometimes, the relief of being clean outweighing the cold. Sometimes there’s even a bath, though those have been less frequent lately. He hasn’t had one, actually, since before the hunt in King Niedamir’s mountains…

Stop.

It was practical, keeping clean, as well as comfortable. Not long after he’d cast out from Kaer Morhen and onto the Path, he’d realised that keeping himself scrubbed and free of unpleasant substances and smells led to slightly better treatment. People found it hard enough to trust a Witcher who was well turned-out and tidy. They found it even harder to tolerate a Witcher who wore his craft quite literally on his sleeve. 

He wasn’t human, not any more. But if he looked it – or at least looked like what a village thought humanity looked like – it meant he was slightly less likely to get run out of the area. It wasn’t a guarantee, by any means. But on average, certainly. The odds of being allowed to stay within the town walls was increased even more if someone who was human was willing to speak up for him…

Viscount Julian’s orders.

Geralt feels his brow crease. Why had Jaskier ordered him divested of his clothes, shorn of his hair?

A cold draught blew over the back of Geralt’s neck, and he shuddered in a way that has nothing to do with temperature.

He hasn’t had short hair since he was taken to be a Witcher. Since he was a boy left at the side of the road to be picked up by Vesemir, or maybe even wolves that were more literal than metaphorical.

Geralt longs to put a hand to the nape of his neck, as though to protect it, but his bindings stop him.

Short hair would be easier, more practical than his usual shoulder-length curtain. That’s what many people have told him over the years, and he cannot deny that they are correct. But his hair also works as an identifier. Someone approaching him from far away will often recognise him by it. This saves him from having to see the look in their eye when they get close enough to take in his medallion, his yellow irises. When people recognise him from a distance, he doesn’t have to watch friendly expressions curdle to a mask of horror once they realise what he really is.

Geralt slides from his sitting position onto the floor, curling up on his side. The flagstones are cold on his bare skin, no longer cushioned by his hair. The sparse straw scratches against his exposed scalp, sensitive where the razor has been dragged across it and left it raw. He closes his eyes, but sleep does not come.

He is startled by four quick taps on the wall. Their meaning springs to the front of Geralt’s mind: are you alright? It’s Ciri.

Geralt forces himself up again, grimacing at the smells the movement releases from his uncomfortable clothes. The shirt is too tight under his armpits, digging into his flesh in a way that’s uncomfortable now and is sure to be painful later. He turns his back to the wall so his knuckles rest against it. He gives just one knock in response: yes. 

He just hears Ciri’s exhale of relief past the rushing in his own ears. She must have heard him get taken away and then dragged back, worried to distraction at what had happened to him in the intervening time. He should have knocked as soon as he had returned, to let her know he was alright. He closes his eyes again against his own incompetence.

Ciri’s reply is the same as before: three quick taps, a pause. Repeat twice, three times in total.

Geralt can’t bring himself to smile this time. But he answers her with the same pattern of strikes.


	3. Least Himself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we find out what the hell Jaskier thinks he's doing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to @spectralbeef for all the encouragement!
> 
> has spoilers for the book Blood of Elves, and probably The Witcher Series 2 as i can't see them leaving out these scenes
> 
> fans of a certain band will recognise the code phrases!

When the soldiers return and tell Jaskier about Geralt and the slop bucket, he laughs.

It’s important, Jaskier feels, to laugh at Geralt as much as possible. People say that Jaskier’s the dramatic one, but he hardly thinks that’s fair; Geralt is the most extra person he’s ever met. Getting swallowed by a Selkiemore, a monster whose diet usually consists of plankton, just to kill it? Ridiculous. Fishing for a Djinn to cure insomnia? Hilarious.

There is another reason, of course. Most of the world, Geralt included, is convinced that Geralt is a monster. Jaskier has spent a decade and a half trying to change peoples’ minds, and for the most part it’s worked… on everyone except Geralt.

What do you do when faced with a monster? Scream, maybe. Perhaps run away. Throw stones and jeer if you think you can get away with it. But no one laughs at – or with – a monster. Every time Jaskier chuckles at the Witcher, he’s sending a message. Not that Geralt seems to notice. 

Laughing at the Witcher when not in his presence, though… without seeing the annoyance warring with pleasure on the Wolf’s face… it leaves Jaskier with a bitter taste in his mouth. So when a page enters the room and bows, interrupting Jaskier’s conversation with the guards, he’s grateful for the distraction. 

“Excuse me, my Lord. Your mage requests your presence.”

Suddenly Jaskier feels distinctly less grateful.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” He says to the soldiers. The guards exchange looks with each other, which amount to something along the lines of: look at our so-called Lord, at the beck and call of a mage! Is he under the thumb or what?

Jaskier is pleased. That is, after all, exactly what he wants them to think.

Jaskier moves quickly through the dark-panelled corridors to the mage’s apartments. This is easy, as everyone who meets him in the hall moves out of his way in deference to his rank, as if repelled by some malign force. The servants back all the way up to the walls, their eyes cast down to the floor and heads bowed. Jaskier makes sure his mask of smug superiority doesn’t falter, while shrivelling inside like a spider caught in a candleflame.

As Jaskier approaches the door, he feels the old terror rise in him once more. For an instant, he is back there…

The dark. The sound of his own panicked breath through his nose – the only sound he can make since Rience pressed his magic mouth-paralysing ring to the skin on Jaskier’s jaw. The crack and burn of tearing muscle and ligaments as he was hauled off the ground by his own hands tied together behind his back, twisting his shoulders practically out of their sockets.

Rience’s questions: Where is the Witcher? Where has he taken Cirilla of Cintra?

The weight they had tied to his feet, meaning that if they lifted him further his tortured arms would not only be bearing his mass, but enough poundage to snap his bones like an overwound lute string. He didn’t need a healer to tell him that if that happened, he’d never play again.

The knowledge that he’d bear it. He’d lose his voice to Rience’s ring. He’d lose his music and limbs to the rope and the weight tied around his ankles. Anything, rather than give up a man who he’d last seen screaming at him on a mountainside.

The creak of the rope as the hired goon that Rience had brought along started to heave on the line that bound Jaskier, ready to pull him up and into a new future where he had neither music, nor friends, nor, possibly, his life…

Rience’s smile as he watched Jaskier’s despair, eyes glinting with anticipation in the lantern light.

Jaskier shakes his head, rubs his wrists to chase away the ghost of their bindings. He exhales once, steadying himself, and knocks.

“Come in!”

“Greetings, Rience,” Jaskier bowed deep, the way the mage likes it.

“Good afternoon, my lord.” Rience manages to say “my lord” in the tone someone else might say “you pissant” which, if he was honest, Jaskier would prefer. At least it would be genuine.

Jaskier straightened up, remaining deferentially at attention. Rience was draped across an armchair, in his chamber that’s much more opulent than Jaskier’s, though Jaskier is technically the resident Lord. He’s looking up at Jaskier with an expression of amusement. Jaskier carefully did not stare at the burn that marred the left-hand side of the mage’s face, or show the satisfaction he felt on seeing it.

“What can I do for you, Rience?”

“You can tell me everything you know, Viscount Julian.”

Jaskier lets his brow crease. “I’m a master of the seven liberal arts, Rience. I know quite a lot, relaying it might take a while. But, if you’ve got the evening free, I suppose we can make a start. Which topic would you like to begin with?”

Rience brings his hand down to rest in the sunbeam that has fallen across the arm of his chair. The light flashes on the ring that he still wears, winking blindingly as it reflects the low evening sun. Jaskier swallows.

“Very amusing, Julian. You are entertaining, sometimes I can almost see why the Witcher allowed you to stick around for so long. Almost.”

Jaskier smiles. “Thank you, Rience.”

“You’re welcome. Now return the complement and tell me what you know.”

Rience’s hand slips into his pocket and draws out a charm. It’s a pretty thing, a grass-woven cage. You’d think that, with only grass blades to hold it together, the structure would buckle and break. But when the cage catches the light, you see what’s giving it its structural integrity: thin wires. Lute strings are interwoven with the plant stalks, holding and bolstering them.

If you look carefully, you can just see a single buttercup imprisoned in the confines of the grass and string structure. A look of panic passes Jaskier’s face. He knows, because he puts it there.

Jaskier stands, if possible, straighter and more rigid. He fixes his eyes on a rather ugly painting that’s hanging above the mantlepiece, portraying a mage calming the sea in garish colours and with poor brushwork. Rience really has no taste, Jaskier thinks for the umpteenth time. He recites several facts; some small, not of enough consequence to give Rience any strategic advantage. Some are large, but just too out of date or slightly too vague to be of any benefit.

Despite this, when Jaskier finishes, Rience gives him a pleased smile, putting away the trapped buttercup. 

“See, Jaskier. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“No, sir,” Jaskier says. For a moment he fears he’s gone too far, chewed the scenery. But Rience preens under the title.

“Good. Run along now, Julian. I’m busy.”

Jaskier bows again, and leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

Jaskier’s feet carry him in the direction of his chamber, and he doesn’t object. He wants to be alone for a while. The high, narrow windows do little to light his way, illuminating the grime more than anything. He’s about to push his door open, when something stops him – a sense of wrongness, a disturbance in the air. He pauses for a moment to slip his hand into his sleeve, then steps into his room.

“Put that away, Jaskier. It won’t be necessary.”

Yennefer doesn’t even look up from where she’s sat at his desk, leafing through his private correspondence with an air of absorption.

At least, it looks like Yennefer. The black hair falling about her shoulders in soft tresses, trailing over the top of her excellently-tailored black-and-white gown. Her diamond-studded obsidian star hangs from its usual place on the velvet ribbon around her neck. Still, one never knows…

“I’ll need a little more convincing than that, thank you,” Jaskier replies. The weight of the Orion throwing star is a comfort in his hand, its edge reassuringly sharp.

Yennefer sighs and looks up, her violet eyes flashing. “Roundabouts and washing lines,” she drawls.

“Darling rooftop wreck,” he responds. He slips the Orion back into its place in his sleeve. It doesn’t disturb the line of his outfit at all, which was no small part of the reason he chose to become proficient with them. A weapon you hold that your enemy can't easily spot is always a bonus. And, while he has nothing against fighting in theory - he wouldn't be friends with a Witcher if he did - he prefers any fight he's forced to participate in to be taking place quite far away. Orions are perfect for this, being accurate to thirty feet.

Yennefer snorts. “Why do you choose such ridiculous phrases for identification codes?”

Jaskier perches himself on the desk next to her. The fire warms him, welcome after the chill he always feels after spending any time with Rience. “Why do we need identification codes at all? Can’t you just tell it’s me, by magic? Prove to me that you’re you, with magic?”

Yenn rolls her eyes. “We’ve been through this, Jaskier. Rience thinks he’s the only mage around for miles. If I do any magic – anything at all, even a Glamour or an Illusion – all it’ll do is alert Rience that I’m here. Which is, as you may remember, the opposite of what we want.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” He grumbles. “Tell me you’ve got good news, Yenn. Tell me you know who he’s working for. I can’t stand being around that little snot rag much longer.”

The way her lips set into a thin, hard line tells him that the answer is no.

“I’ll find out soon. There aren’t many mages who have that amount of power, let alone the ability to gift it to someone else. Rience is nowhere near talented enough to do any real magic by himself.”

“Ah well. I’m sure we’ll work it out between us eventually.”

Yenn’s lips twitch. “Does he still have my calling card?”

Jaskier can’t help but smile at that. He recalls seeing Yenn hurl a fireball through Rience’s portal as he fled her after she’d single-handedly taken out all of his heavies like an avenging fury. Hearing Rience’s answering scream as her magic hit its mark… Jaskier isn’t proud of it, but it’s one of the most satisfying memories he has.

“Yes. A rather ugly scar all down his face, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller despite all the amulets and unguents he uses on it.” His voice grows soft. “Thank you for saving me from them, Yennefer.”

She rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to say that ever time you see me, Jaskier.”

“I know. But I want to. I mean it. Thank you.”

Yenn blows her hair out of her eyes, not meeting his gaze. For someone so self-confident, she’s remarkably bad at taking complements. Which is why Jaskier delights in complementing her at every opportunity.

“How about you? Anything to report?” she’s changing the subject, but Jaskier allows it. He had thanked her immediately after she rescued him from Rience’s torture, of course. The adrenaline had made them both giddy, loose-lipped. Jaskier had promised to write a ballad in her praise – a promise he means to keep, the piece is more than half-composed in the vault of his brain – and Yennefer. Yenn had admitted that she did like him, after all. Counted him as a friend even. The memory makes him tender.

“Nothing big to relay,” he admits sadly. “Dijkstra replaced his last agent. Apparently they weren’t getting far enough, quick enough. The new one arrived four days ago. Zelda. She’s posing as a maid. I’ve had her assigned to the laundry. That’ll keep her away from Rience, and the soldiers. Wouldn’t want her making mincemeat of them, after all. Might raise some awkward questions, that.”

Jaskier, from his perch on the desk, raises his legs to rest them over Yenn’s lap. It’s meant companionably, to show he’s comfortable in her presence.

Yennefer doesn’t seem to take it that way. With a great shove, she pushes his legs from her lap, causing Jaskier to overbalance. The intricately patterned rug does nothing to cushion his fall. He ends up on a heap on the floor with a banged elbow and sore hip. He hastily rearranges himself into a pose that’s less “tangle of limbs” to something that’s hopefully more seductive.

Yenn gives no reaction.

“Are you sure there aren’t more agents here? Ones you haven’t spotted?”

Jaskier splutters. “Yennefer! I’m hurt! I’ve been a rather superior agent of the Redanian Secret Service for years. Do you think I can’t spot a fellow agent a mile away?”

“Maybe. You were only an agent when it suited you, more concerned with your music than your mission. Dijkstra seems to think he can fool you easily enough.”

“Yes, well. I’ve spent the last two decades cultivating the persona of someone who’s a gullible fool for that very reason. If people have a low opinion of you, they’re unlikely to demand anything from you. Life’s much easier that way. Even you didn’t know I was an agent until recently, you wouldn’t have thought I was capable. Geralt still doesn’t know, and I’m his very best friend in the whole wide world. And I must say, Dijkstra fell for it better than most. He thinks – and I quote – that I act like I’m barely ten. He won’t send any more agents. As far as he’s concerned, the bare minimum is more than enough.”

“Hmm,” Yennefer replies, drumming her fingertips on his desk.

Jaskier pushes himself to his feet, suddenly uneasy. He’ll have to tell her, he supposes…

“Er… there was one other thing…” he begins.

Yennefer’s gaze snaps to him. “What?”

Jaskier raises his hands, placating. “It’s fine, honestly. I’ve got it under control.

Violet eyes narrow, thin as the metaphorical ice Jaskier is now skating on. He thinks he can hear it creaking.

“What is it, for Lebioda’s sake? Spit it out, Jaskier.”

“Er… two days ago, they brought me a couple of prisoners to sentence…”

“Who?”

“… Geralt and Princess Cirilla.”

“What!?” Yennefer sits back, retreating from him. Her eyes dart about the room, as if looking for eavesdroppers… or an escape route. 

“It’s alright, Yenn.” He reaches out tentatively but stops short of touching her. “Rience had slimed off to do whatever it is he does when not terrorising me and my household. Zelda was up to her eyebrows in ironing at the time. No one else who saw him would know him from a bar of soap.”

Yenn springs up from her chair, away from his hand. “You don’t know that! For fuck’s sake, this is all we need! Can’t that Witcher keep out of trouble for a moment? Of course not, that’d be too much to ask… Even if no one knew him, he’s bound to be recognised sooner rather than later! Shit.”

Jaskier stays still, a calm point in the room.

“Yes, he is regrettably one of the most recognisable men on the continent…” Jaskier agrees.

Yennefer turns on him. “And whose fault is that?! Who’s been travelling the country, singing the tales of the White Wolf? Cataloguing his scars in fucking song! Your entire back catalogue is basically a Geralt Recognition Guide, Jaskier!”

That stings. Jaskier’s only ever tried to help, and here’s Yennefer suggesting that his songs will be the reason for Geralt’s downfall. What hurts more is that she’s probably right. He pushes down the pain and rising panic, and tries again.

“I told you, it’ll be fine. I’ve, uh… arranged for his appearance to be changed.”

Yenn looks at him, eyebrows all but disappearing into her hairline. “You didn’t Glamour him? Jaskier, you know we can’t use magic!”

“Of course I didn’t use magic. How would I even know where to begin? It was all done by natural means, I promise.”

Yenn stops pacing, but doesn’t sit down. Her breath is snorting from her nose like a horse that’s been forced to gallop for miles. “What did you do?”

Jaskier shrugs. “He’s had his hair shaved off. Can’t be the White Wolf if your pelt is missing. He’s not dressed in his Witcher black, he’s in some cheap yellow tunic I had scrounged from the under-footman, who was throwing it out. And uh… you know how he likes to be clean. Well, by happy accident, he somehow gained rather close knowledge of the guardroom slop bucket. I’d be surprised if even Vesemir would recognise him under all that grime.”

Yennefer’s eyebrows have somehow got even higher. If he didn’t know better, Jaskier would say she looked impressed.

She exhales hard. “That’s… smart. I’m surprised you could bear to do it, it’s almost brutal. You might not be the lost cause I’d taken you for.”

Jaskier feels his brow crease. “Bear to do it? Brutal? It’s only a haircut and some clothes, Yenn. It’s not nice, but it’s not terrible.”

Yenn glares at him like he’s an idiot. This is not strange in itself – once upon a time it was her default way of looking at him, when she deigned to notice him at all. But now it makes him uneasy.

“What? What haven’t I seen?”

“Jaskier. You took away his swords. His clothes. His hair.”

“Well, yes. But I’ve done that too, Yennefer. Look at me, I’m wearing black! This outfit is not flattering at all! I’m pretending to be under the control of a man who tortured me, who would have killed me if you hadn’t turned up in the nick of time! I gave up my music, Yenn! Do you know how long it’s been since I played? I’m losing my lute calluses!”

“Yes, but you chose to do those things. You chose to work with me, to find out who Rience is working for. But imagine if they’d been done to you by force. Imagine if they’d been done to you by Geralt, the first time you saw him after the mountain, while you were in his power and with no explanation as to why.”

Jaskier’s imagination, always vivid, became a spinning whirl of colour and pain at her words. He gaped at her, aghast.

“I’d thinks he was angry. Oh, gods… I’d think he hated me!”

Yennefer’s lip curls, but there’s no humour in it. “Precisely.”

Jaskier fidgets, casting around himself for another explanation, something to make it not true. “But… but he knows it’s not real! I winked at him, as a signal!”

Yenn stares at him, pitying. “And since when has Geralt been able to interpret any signal more subtle than attempted murder?”

Jaskier’s mouth drops open. She’s right.

“Shit, Yenn! How do I fix it? How can I tell him it’s not real?”

“You don’t.”

“I beg your pardon!?”

Yennefer sits again, smoothing the creases from her skirt. “It’ll be more convincing if he’s not acting. You know Geralt, he can’t lie to save his life, and lying is all acting is, really…”

“Excuse me! Acting is an art form and, as such, serves the Higher Truth that is Beauty…”

“It’s lying,” Yennefer interrupts, “and Geralt can’t lie. If he’s discovered then he’ll die and Ciri… well, if she’s lucky she’ll meet a quick end. If she’s not…”

Jaskier groans and drops his head into his hands. “Fine.”

Yennefer’s voice is suddenly flint-sharp. “Is it fine, Jaskier? I didn’t call in all my favours with Archmage de Vries for you to blow our cover because you can’t hide your feelings for the fucking Witcher. Tissaia and I had the very devil of a time Confounding Rience into thinking he’d bewitched you. I’ll not have you ruin everything we’ve worked for.”

“Rience isn’t suspicious. He’s still got that trinket you wove him, the grass cage thing. He’s convinced he’s controlling me with it. It’s a nice touch with the buttercup, by the way. Very clever. I’d believe it myself if I didn’t know I was still acting of my own free will. Mostly.” Jaskier speaks from behind his hands, not caring to hide the misery in his voice.

“None of that matters if you give yourself away making puppydog eyes at your White fucking Wolf, Jaskier.”

Jaskier’s head snaps up and he presses his hands to his heart, wounded to the core. “Yenn! I’m a superlative actor, as you well know! No one, not Rience, or Zelda, or anyone else will suspect me because I’m doing such a good job of pretending to be a preening idiot.”

“Still think you’re not having to pretend very hard,” Yennefer says not quite under her breath.

Jaskier forgets himself for a moment and swats her on the shoulder, and is astounded a moment later when she hasn’t reduced him to a smouldering pile of ash on the floor for it. She really must like him after all.

“The point is, Yennefer, that I have it under control. I’ll handle it.”

He watches Yenn’s internal battle, which she loses. She doesn’t want to leave things like this, but she really has no choice. They’re risking a lot by her even being here to liaise with Jaskier. Interfering further will surely lead to their discovery, and then they’ll never find out who’s pulling Rience’s strings.

Or, they would find out but in the most unpleasant way possible and would be in no position to do anything about it, except maybe beg for their lives.

“Fine. I need to go.” She rises and sweeps to the window, which gives a view of a flawlessly manicured lawn that, if used properly for agriculture, could feed a whole village.

“What are the phrases for next time?” Jaskier asks her departing back.

She turns back to him, waves a dismissive hand. “You’re the poet. You choose.”

Jaskier feels a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. For all she complains, he thinks she likes the phrases he picks. And the gods know they could do with a little whimsy right now. 

“The rockrose and the thistle,” he says.

She nods, the ghost of his smile echoed on her face. “And yours?”

“Bright with every hum.”

She hovers, as if she wants to say something else but doesn’t quite dare to. Which is ridiculous, Jaskier tells himself, there’s nothing Yennefer wouldn’t dare do or say. She’s fearless.

But the seconds tick by, and still she hasn’t left. The muscles around her mouth are tight, as if she’s gritting her teeth around the question she wants to ask. The look she gives Jaskier is almost pleading. 

Understanding washes over Jaskier. 

He speaks as gently as she will let him get away with. “He’s fine, Yenn. He looks tired. Too thin. Worry-worn. But fine.”

The tension in Yennefer’s body winds down a notch as she exhales. She gives him another terse nod, and reaches for the window frame, a lick of peeling paint coming loose under her palm.

“Wait, Yenn,” he steps forward and tugs her into a hug. She is rigid in his arms for a moment, but then her arms come up and squeeze him with surprising strength. She pecks a kiss at the corner of his mouth.

“Take care, Jaskier.”

She opens the window and is through it in moments. He listens to her climb down the ivy trellis as he did thousands of times in his youth. Who could have guessed that a childhood spent learning dozens of ways to sneak into and out of his family home would come in so useful when he was in his thirties?

Yenn is nimble, reaches the ground in seconds despite the encumbrance of her floor-length dress. Her signature colours of black and white mean she becomes just another indistinct shape in the gathering dusk, which reaches the treeline in moments. He blinks, and she is gone.

Jaskier tries not to feel bereft at her absence. Intimidating as she is, and though she’d never admit it, Yennefer has become one of his closest friends. Allies are not something he’s used to within these walls. Now that he understands what it is to have one here, the light that that knowledge shines only illuminates the hole that’s left now she’s gone. A wound he didn’t know he had until he looked down and saw the blood.

Except that he’s not alone, he supposes. Geralt is here somewhere too, three levels down and convinced that Jaskier hates him. And, if he didn’t before, by now he most certainly hates Jaskier right back. 

Jaskier shudders. He and Yenn will find out who Rience works for. He will avoid Dijkstra’s agent. And then, if he dares… he’ll ask Geralt for forgiveness.


	4. In the Right Measure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier's plan seems like it might be about to unravel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter starts off from an OC's perspective, but it shifts to Jaskier's not too far in.

The mountain of clothes beside Zelda shrank at a steady pace. The tunics, shirts and hose disappeared one by one into the scalding water to be beaten into submission and cleanliness before being thrown to the vast tubs of cold water to be rinsed. The repetition was calming, almost meditative.

She preferred this to the ironing, certainly. There was something satisfying about seeing dirt and stains disappear from the material beneath her hands as she worked.

“Find out what that little shit is up to,” Dijkstra had said. “And quickly. Using whatever means necessary.”

He had glanced blatantly down at her chest as he said that. Zelda had kept her expression neutral and nodded, while in her mind her knife slid sweetly between Dijkstra’s ribs and found a home his heart. 

For the head of the Redanian Secret Service, Dijkstra was painfully obvious. He always went for honey traps, even with King Esterad of Kovir, who had resisted every one of the Service’s many attempts. Yet Dijkstra kept trying, like a man screaming at the tide, always believing that this time would finally be the occasion he convinced it not to flood the beach.

Not that Zelda has anything against honey traps. They’re effective, sometimes, a useful tool to have in one’s arsenal. But if your armoury only holds one weapon… well, then it’s not a very good armoury now is it?

Besides, Zelda had done her research on the target – Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount of Lettenhove, a.k.a. Jaskier the Bard – and she was convinced that a honey trap would be entirely the wrong play. The Viscount did indeed have many romantic liaisons in his travels, this was true. But they were always with his equals, like other bards, or with his superiors, as many a Duke and Duchess could attest. None of his dalliances ever occurred with subordinates like, to pick an example totally at random, a laundrywoman in his employ.

Her preliminary investigation into her target had thrown up other relationships that the Viscount had cultivated. As well as lovers, he also collected friendships that had more in common with sibling bonds than sex. The most prominent of these was Essi Daven, a bard whose songs Zelda could not hear without crying at the beauty of them. 

From this, it can be extrapolated that the Viscount has a protective streak. And that can be exploited.

“A protective streak? That may be so, but if he does then that streak only extends as far as himself and his own best interests.” Said the Dijkstra in her mind.

She ignored it as thoroughly as she ignored the real Dijkstra. Obviously the Viscount had a protective streak, or else why would he have taken a Witcher under his wing?

Of course, most people thought it was the other way around, that the Witcher protected the Viscount – but then most people thought that Zelda was Lettenhove’s new laundrymaid. Which just goes to show that what everyone thinks can’t be trusted.

Zelda lets the repetitive, soothing movements of washing and cleansing soothe her as she listens to the chatter of the women around her. She had got extremely lucky getting assigned here, she reflected. All secrets come out in the wash: whose bedsheets had not been slept on. Whose bedsheets had been slept on rather a lot. Whose trousers were soiled with mud and rose petals, when the only rosebush in the grounds was under the study window (and, therefore, who would stand in a flower bed under an open window when a strategic meeting was going on inside said study). Who went out for a “hunt” but came back with an undershirt curiously unsullied for something that had supposedly spent hours against skin that was sweating with exertion under hunting leathers.

A conversation caused Zelda’s ears to prick.

“Ooh, whose new tunic is this?” Lina held up the article, a cheaply-cut but pretty thing.

“Oh, that’s Moritz’s new one.” Klara answered, glancing up from her own work.

Lina plunged the tunic into the waters that had grown grey with dirt around her hands as they worked.

“Oh, I’m glad. I was fed up of looking at that ugly yellow one he had before.”

“Yes, well. We may not have seen the last of it – maybe they’ll expect us to start washing prisoners’ clothes now, as if we didn’t have enough to do.” Klara held up the britches she had been scouring, squinting at them before sighing and returning them to the water for another scrub.

“What do you mean?” Lina paused, leaning her legs against the tub in front of her and wiping her fringe out of her eyes with her wrist.

“Moritz said he was going to throw it out, but Felix – you know, the guard with the spots – stopped him, said they needed something to give to that prisoner they brought in the other day.”

Lina huffed. “Well, if we’re going to have to wash the clothes of criminals I wish they’d at least give them something that doesn’t show stains so much.”

Klara grunted her agreement. The conversation moved on to lunch and how far away it was, leaving Zelda to think.

Hmm.

Of course, as Viscount, Julian was technically in charge of law and order in the area. But normally, his subordinates took care of keeping the peace while the Viscount kept to himself since he’d retired from the road back to his estate.

It was probably nothing, she told herself… but she’d check it out anyway.

Zelda moves to where the baskets of clean, ironed clothes are waiting to be taken upstairs. She picks one up, taking care to pretend to struggle with the weight, and disappears in the direction of the main house. None of her new colleagues even look up as she goes.

She delivers her basket, but instead of returning to the out-building that houses the laundry, she heads to the dining hall. As she hoped, the breakfast plates used by the people of high enough rank to eat at the main table have been left carelessly all over its surface. She passes several people on the way, but no one questions a servant picking up an armful of dirty crockery and heading to the kitchen.

She’s timed it well. When she enters the kitchens, the room is a-bustle with lunch preparations. Zelda has to navigate her way to the scullery to deposit the dirty dishes with care, so as not to crash into any of the dozens of people rushing around in the frenzy that’s required to put together enough food to feed an entire estate.

“…and I’ve got to take this tray down to the cells, too,” says a pale, put-upon serving girl that Zelda doesn’t know.

“I’ll take it, if you like. It’s on my way.” Zelda smiles a smile designed to say: we’re all struggling through this together, hey? No one knows what we go through to keep this lot of ingrates fed!

It must work, because the server looks relieved and dumps the tray into Zelda’s waiting hands.

“Oh, would you? Thanks, love, that’s such a help…” before bustling off to stir a pot whose contents had started boiling over its side and into the fire.

As she heads out, Zelda looks down at the tray in surprise. It’s a very well-stocked tray for a couple of prisoners, the food of a suspiciously good quality. Whoever the captives are, they won’t be wasting away, that’s for sure…

She is almost at the door that leads down to the cells when she hears the Viscount’s distinctive voice. She pauses, straining her ears.

Most of what he says is lost in the background noise of a house full of people, but a few words drift through: “Nilfgaard… message… aid… allies…”

Zelda swears under her breath, pushes the tray into the hands of an under-footman who happens to be passing.

“Take this to the cells,” she orders in a voice that books no argument. The under-footman nods, and Zelda takes off immediately in the direction of the Viscount’s words.

Jaskier is nothing if not a Master Bard. He knows how to put emphasis behind certain words in a sentence. He can make sure they stand out from their fellows, ensure they’re projected through a room crowded with noise and unenthusiastic audience members without doing anything so crass as raising his voice. 

His Alderman blinks at him, confused. It’s fair enough, really, as the words Jaskier had just spoken were not for his ears but those of the Redanian agent just outside the door who could under no circumstances be allowed learn of Geralt’s presence in Lettenhove. That he’d just seen said agent carrying what was unmistakably Geralt’s food tray in the direction of the cells that held the Witcher was a not insignificant issue.

“You feel we need to send Nilfgaard a message that we’ll always send aid to our allies in need?” the Alderman repeats slowly. Gods, the lad can’t be any older than Jaskier had been when he’d met Geralt in Posada. What was Rience thinking, giving such a position to a stripling with no experience?

“Yes,” he replied. 

“…alright, my lord. But what does that have to do with the tithe collection we were speaking of?”

There’s no time. Jaskier waves his hand in his best impression of an imperious Viscount, and stands. “You heard me. Make sure Nilfgaard receives the message I spoke of.” The Alderman stares at him like he’s an idiot, which is all to the good. The man’s in Rience’s pocket, anyway, probably because he’s too young to know better. “Goodbye Alderman.”

There was no sound coming from the door that led to the corridor as it stood just slightly ajar, which is how Jaskier knows that Zelda is definitely there, listening. The silence of an empty space is vastly different to the silence of someone filling a space while making no noise.

He steps out quickly, intentionally bumping into the spy lurking at the threshold. She does a good impression of a laundrywoman who’s accidentally bumped into her employer, squeaking and curtseying and staring at her feet. Fuck. Dijkstra may have accidentally sent a competent person.

Still, it might be fun to play the game with someone on his level.

He glares down his nose at her.

“I’m so sorry, m’lord,” she says miserably.

“Yes, well.” He sweeps past her. “See that it doesn’t happen again.”

“Yes, m’lord,” she tells her shoes.

He can’t leave her alone – what if she goes to the cells after all? He pauses, as if considering. Then he jerks a finger at her, beckoning. “Come. You can make it up to me.”

Her eyes widen as if in surprise, but she follows meekly enough.

He leads her to his room, pulls open a drawer and takes out a length of scarlet ribbon. He holds it out to her.

“Take this.” he says in a lazy drawl that makes it clear that refusal is not an option.

Zelda reaches out, fingers shaking, and grasps the ribbon. Oh, but she’s good. She truly looks terrified. Artist to artist, actor to actor, Jaskier’s impressed. He has to fight down the ridiculous urge to ask for a pause in their clandestine proceedings, to congratulate her on the performance.

“My lord?” she asks, staring at the ribbon in confusion.

“There’s a blasted oak a league into the woods. Take that ribbon, and tie it to one of the branches. Then go back to your duties. Is that understood?”

Excitement very carefully does not flare in Zelda’s eyes. Leaving something conspicuous at a pre-determined spot is one of the oldest spy signals in the book. Obviously, being well-versed in espionage, Zelda knows this. He feels like he can hear her thoughts: Viscount Julian is entrusting her to help in his nefarious plot!

She won’t return to her duties immediately, Jaskier knows. She’ll wait, secluded in the forest, to see who comes to pick up the message from the Viscount de Lettenhove.

Jaskier almost feels bad that she’ll be waiting for someone that doesn’t exist. The ribbon isn’t a signal at all; he was going to use it as a trim for one of his new black doublets, desperate for a bit of colour in the drabness of his new wardrobe. Still, it’ll keep Zelda out of mischief and away from the dungeons, at least for a while.

She bobs a curtsey to him, risking a watery smile, and disappears off through the door. He sees her a short while later through the window, making her way to the forest just like Yenn had last night.

Jaskier sits at his desk for a while, forcing himself to breathe. That was too close. If he hadn’t seen Zelda, she would have made it to the cells. From there, she’d certainly have found an excuse to peek in at the prisoners. Which would mean that Dijkstra may as well have been there himself, peering in at Geralt and Cirilla and plotting how he could use them to his advantage.

No. Jaskier will not allow it.

Should he move Geralt? There’s a cave he knows that’s not far from here, he used to hide his treasures there as a child. He could make something up to have Geralt and Ciri taken there – maybe say that the condemned prisoners are always made to stay in the elements, away from decent folk. Rience has replaced the entire staff of the house with people whose only loyalties are to him, which means there’s no one here who knows the Lettenhove traditions well enough to contradict Jaskier’s claims.

Jaskier sighs. No, it’s too risky to take them out into the open. He can’t move White Wolf and his Child Surprise.

He’ll have to think of something else to keep Zelda busy. Somehow…

Jaskier decides he’s given himself enough recovery time, and heads back to the public portion of the house. He feels a tug as he passes the door down to the cells, a hand reaching into his guts and pulling as if to take him down the steps. To Geralt. He shakes his head slightly at the notion. Visiting that part of the building is a terrible idea, it would almost certainly blow his cover.

Nevertheless, the impulse remains. He could almost swear he heard Geralt shouting! Really, his imagination may be getting out of hand on this one…

The shout is repeated, muffled by the door but unmistakably coming from the cells and not Jaskier’s mind.

Bollocks. For Freya’s sake, what now!?

Jaskier’s thoughts whir for a moment, but he can’t think of a way to interrupt what’s going on down there short of intervening himself. There are no allies he can send down in his place; Yenn is wherever the fuck Yenn goes when she’s not with him, and the only other person he’d trust with something this important is already down there, shouting as if in pain.

Jaskier squares his shoulders. Well, is he the Viscount de Lettenhove or isn’t he? He never wanted it, never intended to claim the bloody title, but Destiny apparently had other things in mind. One of the few good points about being a lord is that a Viscount has the run of his estate. If he chooses to inspect his prisoners, how is that anyone’s business?

Jaskier forces himself to walk down the stairs at a stately pace, rather than taking them three at a time like he wants to. His eyes adapt to the flickering lantern light as he descends, but he almost wishes they hadn’t. That way he might have been spared the image of Geralt, bound and helpless on the floor as Felix the Guard Captain’s boot collides with him, over and over.

The Viscount de Lettenhove draws himself up to his full height, strides up to the Captain to tower over him.

“And just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demands.

Felix stops, thankfully. Griveld, who had been sniggering and blocking the Witcher’s retreat with his legs, looks around as if seeking help.

Jaskier takes advantage of the moment to glance down at Geralt. He’d been braced for it to be bad, but it’s worse than he’d foreseen. Geralt’s face is a bloody mass of flesh, nose broken and lips split from Felix’s kicks. What little skin that’s left uncovered by his clothes that isn’t obscured by blood is covered in grime from the slop bucket incident. The Witcher is breathing, but tenderly, as if his ribs hurt. Jaskier prays to whatever gods might be listening that his lungs aren’t punctured.

“Well?” he demands. He’s restraining the fury in his voice with great effort. He’s seen Geralt hurt before, but the expression on the Witcher’s face is more pained than he’s ever seen it.

No, that’s not true. He’s seen Geralt look worse once, but only once, when Yennefer stalked away from him on a mountainside after a victorious dragon hunt.

“Just having a conversation with the prisoner, my lord. We asked him some questions, polite like, but he didn’t want to answer. We were just persuading him, weren’t we Griveld?”

Griveld nods mutely.

Jaskier’s eyes narrow.

“Who’s the lord in these parts, Captain?”

Felix purses his lips, reluctant to answer.

“I asked you a question. Shall I persuade you into answering like you were persuading our guest here?”

“You are, m’lord,” the Captain spits out.

“Yes, I am. Thank you. So, if anyone’s going to interrogate the prisoner, who should it be, do you think? Come on now, Felix. I’m sure that, if we put our heads together, we can come up with the solution to this query.”

“You, Viscount Julian.”

“Yes, me. Splendid. So why did you take it upon yourself to do my job?” Jaskier draws upon all his experience lecturing at Oxenfurt, all his fights with Valdo Marx, all his playful spite-offs with Essi, and directs an atmosphere of contempt at Felix with a ferocity that only a Master Bard could muster. The Captain shrivels under his gaze.

“…Rience the mage said we weren’t to disturb you unduly,” Felix replies. This of course is code for: Rience said not to tell the Viscount anything. 

Jaskier looks down at Geralt again, and finds the one amber eye that’s not swollen shut is looking right at him. It’s hard to tell in the dark, and Jaskier doesn’t dare look long, but he thinks he sees… trust. A wary trust.

He makes himself look back at the Captain, the very picture of frustrated impotence, as if he really has been checkmated by his mage. He taps his foot, as if in impatience, three times. He waits a beat and repeats it twice more, three times in total.

There is no audible reaction from Geralt, and Jaskier doesn’t dare look down to see if his message has landed. He hopes fiercely that it did. Please, Geralt, he shouts as loud as he dares within his own head. I’ve got you. I’ll keep you safe. Even if it kills me, I’ll protect you.

He continues to stare at Felix as if trying to gimlet holes in the guard’s face.

“Excuse me, m’lord…” 

Jaskier looks to Griveld, surprised to hear the man form a coherent sentence.

“What?” he snaps.

“Sorry, but… why do you care if we talk to the prisoner? He’s only going to be put to death anyway. And Mage Rience did say not to disturb you.”

Fuck. Griveld had a reputation for making two short planks look like a scholar. Why had he chosen now, of all times, to become perceptive?

“I don’t care,” Jaskier responds. He looks down at Geralt, who still has that hurt-but-not-like-he-hurt-on-the-mountain look on his face. That look is warring, though, with… confusion. Indecision.

And isn’t that just typical? It’s one of Geralt’s more infuriating qualities. Try and hide something from the Wolf and he’d see through you in an instant. Jaskier had seen him cut through all the charm and flattery that any mage or villager could muster like a hot knife through thin ice, uncovering the truth that they had hoped would stay buried with a few choice words. 

But try and give him a real, honest-to-gods message, and all you got for your trouble was a blank stare.

Jaskier turns his attention back to Felix and Griveld. Melitele help him, they’re suspicious. Months of acting as Rience’s lapdog, the shitty mage’s sodding marionette, and nothing. No one had suspected a thing. Then Geralt appears and turns it all to shit in an instant…

Jaskier can’t help the Witcher if the truth comes out.

He looks back down at Geralt, whose expression has shifted from wariness to the barest flicker of hope. Not that anyone who hadn’t travelled with him for fifteen years could tell the difference.

Jaskier can.

And he knows, as the guards stare at him, that he’s going to have to kill that hope dead. 

“The mage is very sweet to worry about my rest. He has, of course, my best interests at heart. Still,” he gives Felix and Griveld a wicked grin. “That doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun.”

Jaskier doesn’t use fists, or feet. He doesn’t touch Geralt at all. He uses words, phrases chosen specifically to slip under the skin like a flaying knife and fester there. As he speaks, he sees Felix and Griveld relax around him, start laughing, start egging him on. He glances up at them with a smile that makes his stomach turn, before looking back at Geralt.

Ah. There it is, clear as day on the Witcher’s face after all. The look from the mountain is back.


	5. Always One More Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yennefer's not good at comforting people. she's trying, okay?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few perspective shifts in this one. hopefully it's not too confusing!

Geralt had always thought that he was the one who could hurt Jaskier as easy as breathing, but had been holding himself back out of the goodness of his heart.

Turns out he had that wrong, like just about everything else.

He’d known that the bard had a mean streak, of course he had. He’d even seen Jaskier and Valdo Marx in full flow, once, in a banquet in Cidaris, and it had unnerved him more than he cared to admit. They’d been more vicious than any bruxa, more savage than a kikimore, tearing each other apart with words alone. Geralt had left the party after a while, and the memory still made him uncomfortable.

He wouldn’t have thought, though, that Jaskier could be quite this malicious. That he said what he said was, of course, devastating. That he said it after tapping out that particular message, purposely getting Geralt’s hopes up just to shatter them so thoroughly…

Jaskier’s words fight their way back to the surface of their brain. In his long life, Geralt had thought he’d heard every insult, every barb that could be thrown at a Witcher. And, for the most part, he had. But Jaskier had found some jibes that were entirely new, and spun the old ones on his tongue until they hit with a force that was both new and debilitating.

Of course, Geralt has no one to blame but himself. He shouldn’t have let the bard close enough to learn the right words to hurt him. He should have just kicked Roach into a brisk trot that day in Posada, left Jaskier behind on the dirt path to the Valley of Flowers.

He also, probably… definitely. Definitely should not have said what he said on the mountain after Yenn had left. Maybe that was why Jaskier was being like this. But Geralt hadn’t meant it, not even as he said it. He just hadn’t been able to stop himself. Growing up in Kaer Morhen, he’d been taught to react to any attack with ferocity. And Yenn’s words had felt like an attack, one of the most painful things he’d endured. It had awakened his fighting instincts, and they had beaten inside his bones without an outlet as he watched her walk away.

And then Jaskier had been there, chattering as usual. As if nothing was wrong. As if Geralt wasn’t a husk that could be blown away by the slightest gust of wind across that thrice-damned mountain.

And Geralt had turned, and opened his mouth, and let it out. It was reflexive, a pressure release valve opened so that he didn’t blow completely. But it was also because he felt safe. Jaskier is his safety, has always acted as a soft buffer between the human world and the abrasive Witcher who’s forced to move through it to make a living. Jaskier has been there to take the brunt of Geralt’s ire when a hunt’s gone sideways, when people refuse to pay for a contract he’s completed, when the world is too much and it’s all Geralt can do not to bear and teeth and growl like the animal that people say he is. He’d assumed that Jaskier would weather his speech on the mountain, like he’d weathered everything else. 

But Geralt had gone too far. He’d let his acquaintance with the bard go too far. He shouldn’t have let the man follow him around for so long, should have punched him harder and chased him off.

If he had, though, he’d never have been at the Pavetta’s wedding feast. Ciri would not have been part of his life. And, though her he knows her life would be so much better without him in it, he can’t bring himself to be sorry that he gets to be part of her journey. 

Selfish. He leans his head back on the wall harder than he intended and grunts in pain as the movement jars every sore muscle. Selfish.

And, even now, Geralt can’t bring himself to be sorry for the time Jaskier has spent in his life. Even now, when his most recent memories of the bard – or Viscount Julian, as he prefers to be called these days – are of Julian’s eyes looking into his face unflinchingly and saying the worst things he could possibly say, calling on a decade and a half’s worth of ammunition to give voice to the things about Geralt that Geralt least wants to hear. Even now, he can’t regret Jaskier, just like he can’t regret Ciri. Or Yennefer.

Gods, but he’s weak. Vesemir would box his ears if he knew, call him a fool and a glutton for punishment. And he’d be right. 

Geralt shifts, and the movement disturbs the smells that had been dormant in the fabric of his clothes – another gift from Jaskier. The smells of spoiled food are just varied enough that his nose cannot get used to them and tune them out, giving a newly-unpleasant tone for him to appreciate at every other moment. Then, of course, there is the familiar but by no means comforting smell of his own blood. Tonight, though – or this morning, or afternoon. He really has no idea what time it is. But now, a new scent has been added. The smell that was coming off Julian, who had stayed in close proximity for quite a while as he spoke.

Geralt, unable not to listen to the Viscount’s words, had cleaved to an idea. Julian had signalled to him, hadn’t he? Maybe he was lying, maybe this was all part of some elaborate plan…

Then an air current had brought him Julian’s scent, and that had stamped out Geralt’s last recourse. Julian smelled of disgust. He stared at Geralt, speaking words that pierced skin and let poison seep into the bloodflow beneath, and smelled of nothing but hatred and contempt.

When he’d finally been allowed to crawl back into his cell to the sound of laughter from the Viscount and the guards, the door had barely closed behind him before Ciri had tapped out the triplet of three taps. Geralt didn’t flinch at the sound, despite Julian’s recent use of it, but only because it was Ciri. He could never flinch at Ciri.

He’d returned the communication, and then tried to find solace in meditation as he usually did. But the words he’d been forced to listen to had built a barrier between Geralt and his usual defences, leaving him exposed and raw in the midst of a pain he cannot not direct anywhere but where it belongs: inwards. 

Zelda is too angry to go back to the room she shares with Klara. She is also too wet.

She’d waited, like a good agent, for hours at the liaison site after tying the ribbon around the oak tree. She should have known it was a ruse; tying a ribbon around a blasted oak was too poetic, too picturesque to be real espionage. It was just the sort of thing, she’d realised as she stood for the umpteenth hour in the driving rain, that a Viscount would not think of. But a Bard would.

She was increasingly sure that the partial conversation she’d “overheard” had been staged for her benefit, too. Another hookless bait to keep her running in circles. She ground her teeth, angrier with herself than she had ever been before.

She let herself in via the kitchen door, secure in the knowledge that it would be abandoned at this time of night. Her clothing stuck to her uncomfortably, soaked with rain water, but she welcomed the discomfort. She deserved it, for being stupid. She’d underestimated Jaskier. It wouldn’t happen again.

The embers of a fire still glowed in the hearth. She took the tinder box, coaxed the fire back to life, and draped her shawl and outer layers in front of the fire to dry. She set a kettle to boil over the flames to make herself some tea to warm her from the inside. 

She really was disappointed in herself. But, beneath her ire, there was another feeling curling around her insides like a cat winding around someone’s legs. She searched for a name. Excitement? No, not quite. Anticipation, maybe. After a lifetime of dealing with Dijkstras, coming up against a Jaskier was… exhilarating.

She couldn’t wait to beat him into the ground.

With that happy thought, she drained her mug. She washed it quickly, gathered her things and put out the fire. She was just about presentable enough to sneak into her room in the attics. If she was lucky, Klara wouldn’t even wake up to ask her where she’d been. 

Zelda was about to climb the servants’ stairs when she paused. Should she? Well. She was late enough to bed already. May as well push her luck as far as it would go. It’s not like the day could become any less of a success.

She moved through the darkened house silent as an intention, retracing her footsteps from earlier in the day as she had followed Jaskier to his chambers before he’d sent her on his fool’s errand. She’d taken the ribbon back down from the tree, in the end. It was nestled in her pocket. She’d wear it in her hair once this job was finished, she decided.

She was surprised to see the bard’s door was half-open, as if the last person to enter had been too careless to close it properly. Zelda stopped just outside the beam of lantern light that spilled from the open door and listened.

“Honestly, Julian. You bore me. You frustrate me. And I know you don’t like it when I get bored and frustrated.” The voice she could hear was strange, as though the mouth forming the words had difficulty shaping them. She risked a look through the door, and saw why: the left side of the man’s face was covered in burn scars, the marred tissue pulling one side of his mouth into a tight, inflexible snarl. 

Jaskier was a completely different person to the man she remembered from this afternoon, flustered and submissive.

“Rience, I’m sorry. I’m trying, really I am. But I’m just a bard. A poet! I make up stories for a living. If you want a good rhyme or artfully constructed simile, then I’m the person to call on. But if you want someone to… I don’t know, skulk about and spy… then I’m only going to disappoint.”

Sure, Jaskier’s just a bard. And Zelda’s the Queen of Lyria.

“Are you trying, my lord? Really? Because I’m not sure you are. I think you might still be trying to hold things back from your old friend Rience. But do you think that’s a good idea? It’s not too late for your clever hands to be rendered useless.”

Jaskier is pale. He’s been backing away from Rience, seemingly unconsciously, but now his back has come up against the glass of the windowpane and he has nowhere else to retreat. Rience steps forward, crowding into the bard’s space. His hand reaches into his pocket and draws out something green and roughly spherical that Zelda has to squint at to make out.

At the sight of this – charm, is it? – Jaskier tries to move away further, his hands scrabbling at the smooth glass behind him. Rience laughs.

“You know you couldn’t escape anyway, Jaskier. Not while I hold this. I really wish you’d tell me, without forcing me to resort to these measures all the time. But you really do seem to be too stupid to learn, so you give me no choice. Now. Tell me.”

Jaskier closes his eyes, sags. Then his mouth opens, and he begins to speak.

Zelda recognises his words. They’re locations, code keys, identification phrases and markers that the RSS uses. He’s turned informer! Or… is being forced to inform?

As she listens, something strikes Zelda as not quite right. The codes, phrases, and signals that Jaskier is giving are real. But they are also outdated. Some of them Zelda hasn’t used in months, or years. Some of them she doesn’t recognise at all, so they must predate her enrolment in the Service. They’re not codes the RSS uses. They’re codes the RSS used.

Rience, however, seems satisfied. He pockets the green thing again, smirking in a way that has nothing to do with the scar’s pull and everything to do with the air of smugness he’s exuding.

“Good boy, Julian. Until next time, then.”

Zelda makes herself scarce before Rience has even reached the door. She’s in her room in the attic before he’s made it halfway down the corridor. She has a lot to think about.

The next morning, Zelda offers to go out and pick lavender. The laundry puts bundles of it in the clean, dry linen, to keep away moths and for the pleasant scent, but their stocks are running low. The weather outside is still miserable and no one fights Zelda for the job.

Zelda takes her basket and picks enough lavender to last the laundry for weeks. If some other plants make their way into her basket as well, no one notices.

Yenn stood at the treeline, watching Jaskier’s window. It was easy enough to see what was going on, as Rience had the bard backed up against the glass, threatening him with the grass charm. Her fingers itched to take some chaos and hurl it at the subpar mage, to char the rest of him so it matched the maimed half of his face.

She wasn’t worried for Jaskier. She trusted him to handle someone as useless as Rience, though that fact would have surprised her a short while ago.

When Yennefer had followed Jaskier from his performance a few months ago, she had been less than enthused to have talk to him, but it couldn’t be avoided; she had a job to do. To be fair, her dislike of the mission wasn’t the bard’s fault. She just associated him with… someone else. Someone she didn’t want to be reminded of.

When she’d lost him on the road, she hadn’t been worried. The bard was always disappearing off, getting into trouble and sauntering back out of it just as easily. But then she’d had an instinct, and followed it. She’d magically sharpened her hearing outside a door, heard the bard being tortured, and refusing to give up… the someone she didn’t want to be reminded of. That someone who, despite herself, she still didn’t want to fall into the hands of enemies.

Fucking Djinn magic.

The Jaskier that had revealed himself to her since that night was worlds away from what she’d expected. She’d never thought of him as more than someone who was fun to torment with her words, occasionally, as they bantered back and fore while Geralt was too taciturn to speak. Jaskier had liked that too, keeping his verbal sparring skills in peak condition so that he could hold his own when he played at court. When he wasn’t a conversational opponent, he had dropped into the background like so much white noise.

But, since they had both abandoned their previous commitments to join this cat-and-mouse game with Rience, Jaskier had revealed himself to be so much more. He was her…

A memory flashed up. Geralt, standing over Jaskier as he lay in a magically-induced healing sleep as he recovered from the Djinn’s attempt on his life.  
Geralt ground the words out like they hurt him. “I said some things to him. He’s a…”

“A friend?” she’d asked, amused.

No. Jaskier wasn’t her friend. He was her…

He was hers. That’s what he was. It didn’t mean she liked him. It just meant he was hers. And she had never been very good at sharing. And here was Rience, threatening what was hers…

She thrust her hands in her pockets to force her to reserve her chaos.

She’d been having a bad day anyway. Her enquiries were getting nowhere – no one she asked had even heard of Rience. She had managed to uncover that he’d been a student at Ban Ard, and been expelled. Then he just… dropped out of existence, apparently. Triss didn’t know who he was. Margherita didn’t know. Even Tissaia was coming up with nothing. Yenn didn’t trust anyone else enough to ask them directly, but even her more covert investigations were yielding no results.

And then, when the alarm had sounded… Yenn had not panicked. She wanted to make that very clear. She certainly had not been frantic. She’d just portalled here immediately as she had nothing better to do.

Finally, Rience finished his attempt to be menacing, and moved out of the room. Yenn counted to eighty-eight in her head, and then climbed the trellis to Jaskier’s room.

The bard was sat in a chair by the fire almost doubled over, elbows on knees and head in his hands. He hadn’t heard her climb in through window, but his head snapped up when she spoke.

“The rockrose and the thistle,” she says with a wry quirk of the mouth. He gasps, clutches at his heart – ever the dramatic, she couldn’t have scared him that badly – but he responds.

“Bright with every hum. Lilvani’s sake, Yenn, you scared the shit out of me!”

Yenn seats herself comfortably in the chair opposite him, on the other side of the fire. She lets it warm her, resisting the temptation to reach out and draw its chaos to her.

“What are you doing here, Yenn? It’s barely been any time since you last came. You shouldn’t risk being here any more than you have to.”

She inspects her nails as she answers, speaking as if the words mean nothing.

“I picked up a signal from you. I thought I’d better come and check you hadn’t done anything stupid.”

“What? A signal? I thought you couldn’t use magic here!” Jaskier’s wide eyes look almost like Geralt’s as they reflect the firelight.

“I can’t. The vibrations in Chaos that a spell cast on these premises would reach Rience immediately, even that pathetic specimen would pick them up. But I didn’t cast the spell here.”

Jaskier is still staring at her. “You might think that was an answer, Yenn, but it really wasn’t.”

She sighs. “I’ve spent quite a lot of time around you, Jaskier. More than enough time to map your algorithm. From that, it’s not too much work to construct a matrix around you that…”

Jaskier’s face is blank. Of course, magic isn’t taught in Oxenfurt. Aretuza and Ban Ard would have something to say about it if it were, after all. She adjusts her mindset, tries again.

“I know you well, Jaskier. I’ve used that knowledge to build a… oh, an early-warning system, call it. It’s based far away, so it won’t show up to Rience. The receiver is at my house.”

He blinks, alarmed. “You’re monitoring me?!”

“No, Jaskier. It just means that if anything major happens, I know to come immediately.”

Jaskier frowns, taking in what she’s saying.

“So… what alerted you, then?”

Yenn would shift uncomfortably, if she did that sort of thing. Instead, she runs her index finger over the obsidian star hanging from the ribbon at her neck.

“I felt… your despair.”

Jaskier’s face lights up, delighted for a moment. “Yennefer, were you worried about me?”

“No. I thought you’d been found out and blown the mission. I came to see if anything could be salvaged. Imagine my surprise when I turned up and everything is, apparently, running smoothly.”

“Of course it is! I told you, I’m a master of every artform – including espionage.”

Yennefer stares at Jaskier’s face in the firelight. He looks old. Haggard. His hair is dishevelled, as if he’s been running his hands through it, rather than its usual just-so prettiness.

“What happened to make you feel like that, Jaskier?” she asks.

His face closes down. Yenn has to suppress the urge to reach out with her mind, read what he won’t tell her in his thoughts. She doesn’t, but only because even that small ripple in Chaos might alert Rience. Honestly, how do people get anything done without magic?

“…Geralt,” Jaskier says, and then his voice chokes off. Yennefer’s gut clenches in something that feels like terror, but she reminds herself that it’s not real – it’s just the Djinn’s magic making her feel this way. The fact that it feels more real than most of the emotions she’s felt in her long life is irrelevant.

“What about him?” her voice sounds bored.

“He… I… Yenn…” Jaskier collapses in on himself, like an empty water skin crumpled in a fist. Without consciously deciding to, Yenn rises and seats herself on the arm of his chair. She’s never been good at this sort of thing…

“Look at you, bard. You’re a mess. Let’s tidy you up, or you’ll lose your philandering reputation…”

She reaches out and rubs a smudge of soot from his cheek. Jaskier half-turns in his chair and hugs her. It’s desperate, his fingers digging into her flesh and tangling in the fabric of her dress. She can’t find the will to care, much less the strength to push him off her. Instead she strokes his tousled hair back to its usual shape, making her touch tender as it can be. She expects to feel his hot tears fall on her, but his eyes remain dry.

Another memory surfaces, the role reversal jarring her. Herself as a girl at Aretuza, with bandaged wrists. Tissaia stroking her hair. “There’s nothing more pathetic than a sorceress in tears,” Archmage de Vries had told Yennefer’s younger self.

But. Tissaia had also said…

“I’m not going to say anything to anyone. Cry. Let it all out.”

Jaskier shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Jaskier. What happened?”

He spoke without letting go of her, and she kept stroking his hair.

“Rience is asking about the RSS. I think that means he knows, or at least suspects, that Dijkstra’s sent someone. I might have to move Zelda for her own safety.”

“Jaskier. I asked you what happened.”

He burrowed his head further into her stomach, like a child trying to hide. That really was too much. She gently pushed him away. He refused to meet her eye.

“…they were hurting Geralt. I stopped them, but he was looking at me like… like he wasn’t sure. So I gave him a signal, tried to let him know I didn’t mean any of it.”

“I see. You did precisely what I told you not to do. How did that turn out?”

“Oh gods, Yenn… the guards got suspicious. So I had to make them believe in me. I…”

“You hurt him?”

“Yes. No. Not physically. But I said… I said things, Yennefer. Things no one else knows. Things he trusted me with. Oh, gods… and. And, you know how he can smell what you’re feeling? The pheromones or whatever. Well, I couldn’t have him knowing, so I just… I concentrated on what I was feeling about myself, and the guards – hate, disgust. So he couldn’t tell how sorry I was for what I was saying. Yenn, he thinks I meant it!”

Yennefer grasps his shoulders, forces him up so he can look at her.

“Would you rather he was dead?”

He shakes his head, horrified. “No, of course not! But you didn’t hear…”

“And I don’t have to. Because whatever it was, it’s better than Geralt getting found out. It’s better than him getting killed. Trust me, it’s better off this way.”

Jaskier grunts a mirthless laugh. “How is it better, Yenn?”

“Because if you hadn’t kept your cover and given a convincing performance, if you’d got Geralt and Cirilla killed… then you’d have had to deal with me. And I’m much worse than Rience, and whoever Rience is working for.”

Jaskier actually goes pale in the firelight. It’s rather gratifying, really. Yennefer smiles a nasty smile at him, perfected over her years at Aedirn’s court, and he pales a bit more. But he doesn’t back away.

“You’re right.”

“Hmm. Just remember, you can feel bad about yourself all you like once this is over, though I don’t see how it would be helpful. But for now, you just need to keep Geralt and Cirilla safe.” She gets up to go, mindful that she’s spent too long here already. “What are the phrases?”

“Um. Carpet burns and carousels.”

She smiles again, genuinely this time. “And mine?”

“Words that shone.”

He looks so small standing by the hearth. Yenn crosses the room to him, hugs him tightly to her for a moment. In his ear, quiet enough to be deniable if he ever brings it up, she whispers: “You’re not alone. If you need me, I’ll come.”

Jaskier clings to her, hard. She soothes her palm over the nape of his neck, presses a kiss to his cheek. Then she disappears through the window into the darkness beyond.


	6. Seek the Unforeseen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yennefer has some emotions and isn't a fan. an impasse is reached.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more spoilers for Blood of Elves and probably The Witcher series 2
> 
> there's a mix of book canon and show canon, i'm cherry picking a bit
> 
> we're getting towards the end! thanks to people who have stuck with it the whole time! 
> 
> if anyone has an idea of what they'd like me to write next, please feel free to put a prompt in the comments =)

Yennefer couldn’t grind certain very sensitive parts of Rience’s anatomy with her pestle and mortar – not yet, anyway – and so was having to make do with plant matter. She added another handful of berries to the concoction in the mortar, feeling them pop satisfyingly under her ministrations.

She’s never cultivated patience; never seen the point. Why be patient when you can just take what you want? As one of the most fucking powerful mages on the Continent (there’s no pride in that, just the statement of fact), she’s been able to get what she wants as soon as Chaos could provide it.

And then the Battle of Sodden Hill happened, and people were calling her a hero. She hadn’t wanted it, when Vilgefortz had recruited her and twenty-one other mages from across the North of the Continent to stand against Nilfgaard. She hadn’t craved the adoration of the public, much less expected it. But why shouldn’t they call her that? She’d very nearly become one of the Fallen, and if it hadn’t been for her then the Fallen would have numbered a lot more than Fourteen. Or thirteen, once Triss had recovered enough to be recognisable.

Yenn carefully does not remember what Triss had looked like pre-recovery. She definitely does not recall what Coral looked like, right before she did not recover at all.

Most importantly of all, she did not remember the darkness that had descended on her even as she flooded the Hill with fire. The feeling of blood pouring from her eyes as she forced Chaos against itself and Chaos took its terrible payment from her.

And now the information from Nilfgaard was saying that the Emperor of Nilfgaard hadn't even wanted to attack Sodden Hill. They said that his Generals had gone rogue, that their victory at the Massacre of Cintra had gone to their heads and they'd pushed ahead to Sodden despite their orders to fall back.

So what had it been for? If Nilfgaard hadn't wanted the Battle, and the North certainly hadn't either, then why had the Fourteen fallen? 

Yenn’s hands still at her work for a moment. A slight breeze blows tentatively through the workshop, across the crowded workbench that’s cluttered with magical detritus and her open grimoire. The bunches of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling sway in the air current, scenting the air with their bitterness.

The point was. The point was, nothing was denied the Heroes. Nothing should be denied to them, after they had turned the tide against the Nilfgaardian invasion. Since then, once she’d been healed, she’d only had to say the word for her wish to be granted.

She’d said several words now, though, and yet all she knew about Rience was what she’d uncovered in her first cursory investigation.

The image of Rience backing Jaskier against the glass rose in her mind uninvited, the mage’s gloating smile as he loomed over the bard and threatened Jaskier…

The mortar bowl broke into two halves in her hands, the ceramic sharp against her skin. She grunted in annoyance, concentrated for a moment. Then she carried on with her work, the bowl back in one piece once more.

Rage bubbled up inside her. She barely resisted throwing her newly-repaired bowl against the wall.

Who was Jaskier to make her care about him? Why should she care if he got himself kidnapped and tortured? If he blew his cover and got killed for the trouble?

It’s infuriating. It’s not like she can even blame this weakness on a fucking Djinn.

She glanced across her workshop at the little figurine that stands serenely on a jewellery box. It’s an extremely good likeness of the bard, down to the obnoxiously-coloured clothes and cornflower blue eyes. To anyone else it’s an ornament, a tacky decorative figurine. To her, it’s a sympathetic point linked to the matrix she built around Jaskier after mapping his algorithm. If it topples, it means he’s in distress.

It doesn’t even wobble as she glares at it, almost daring it to move. She exhales.

He’s fine. Jaskier’s fine.

Yennefer scrapes the paste from the mortar into the crucible hovering next to her workbench. She heats it with a blast of fire directly from her hand, then picks up the white-hot crucible with bare fingers absent-mindedly. She takes a pinch of something grey and powdery from a jar, and ignores the salamander-flash that fills the workshop as she adds it to the smoking crucible.

Outside the window is a fuchsia bush in full bloom. She stares at it for a long moment, feasting her eyes on the colour that’s almost uncomfortable in its intensity. Frost creeps from her fingers, sending spindles outwards to encompass the crucible that does not stop smoking even as water vapour starts to condense from the air around it.

There’s something obvious, she knows. Something she’s missing.

The potion starts eating through the crucible, dissolving the metal in seconds with acidic inevitability. It’s ready. Yenn catches the corrosive material in her hand, deposits it in a glass phial and seals it carefully.

It doesn’t matter. She can be patient. The serpent eats its tail; the person who set Rience on the world will find their own pawn moved against them. She’s got her sight back now and she will see the wood for the trees. It’s only a matter of time.

Jaskier is coming to the realisation that Rience hasn’t summoned him to garner information, this time. The mage had sent his valet to summon the Viscount de Lettenhove almost an hour ago, but had yet to make a single demand of Jaskier. The bard is forced to conclude that there is no reason for this, other than Rience’s desire to watch him squirm.

Well, no problem there; squirming is easy. After a few seconds in the mage’s company, Jaskier is fighting the temptation to scrub his skin inside and out.

Rience’s meandering monologue circles back to one of his favourite topics: what he’ll do to Yennefer if he catches up with her.

“You thought she’d saved you, didn’t you, Julian? Well, it didn’t help you in the end. You still ended up here, with me, helping me like the good little tame bard you are. Maybe, if you’re good, I’ll let you watch what I do to the bitch from Vengerberg once I catch up with her. I’ll pay her back for this scar with these very fingers, a thousand times over.”

Jaskier paints on a look that’s equal parts horror and fear, though it’s a struggle. The idea of Rience going against Yenn, and thinking he could win, is laughable. The image goes quite a way to cheering him up, actually.

“Oh, don’t worry, Julian. You won’t be far behind her. Once you’re no longer useful to us, you’ll be reunited with Yennefer. You’d suit a shallow grave. I’m sure some necrophage would make a feast of the two of you.”

Us, Jaskier thinks. Rience said you’re no longer useful to us. It’s painfully, tantalisingly close to revealing who Rience is working with. The little shit’s so careless most of the time, why won’t he slip and end it already?

“Yes, Rience.” Jaskier says, the picture of a man beaten into submission.

The door opens, pushed open by a maid carrying a log basket in front of her. She pauses, eyes wide at seeing the lord of the manor and his mage apparently in an intimate discussion.

“Oh! I beg your pardon m’lord, master mage. I thought no one was here, I was just going to re-stock the log pile…”

Rience’s chair has its back to the door and he doesn’t turn to look at the servant. He just waves a hand lazily, ring glinting in the light as his hand sweeps through the air, with the clear message of: get on with your job and get out.

Reaching the fireplace means the maid has to step into the light. Jaskier has to fight to keep his face blank. It’s Zelda.

Fuck. If Rience found out that one of Dijkstra’s spies was in Lettenhove, all hell would break loose. He’d capture her, with his stolen magics, and wring from her all she knew, just as he surely would have torn information from Jaskier, everything he knew, if Yenn hadn’t saved him. Shit, shit, shit…

“Do you enjoy hunting, Rience?” Jaskier asked wildly. Anything to keep Rience’s attention on him and away from the spy behind him…

Rience’s eyebrows raised in surprise at receiving a direct question from Jaskier.

“Yes, I do, my lord. Though my preferred prey goes on two legs, if you understand me…”

“Certainly I do,” Jaskier responds, in his best impression of a Viscount’s courtly manners. And it was true, there are lots of things to hunt with only two legs. Fowl, for starters. And lots of monsters are bipedal, as years travelling with Geralt had revealed. But somehow that’s not what he thinks Rience is implying.

Zelda has finished unloading her log basket, is making her way back to the door. Keep going, Jaskier pleads internally. For Melitele’s sake, keep going…

She stops directly behind Rience.

“Oh, master mage! You have a stain just here, on the back of your doublet. Would you give it to me? I work at the laundry, I’ll have the mark out in a moment. I’m only filling the logs because Helga’s ill today, poor thing.”

“Girl, I could remove any stain instantly, with only a thought. Such things are possible for sorcerers like me.” Jaskier does not roll his eyes, but only because he has cast-iron self-control. Rience smiles at him conspiratorially, and Jaskier thinks he will never feel clean again. “Then again, why should I clean it? Viscount Julian graciously pays your wages, after all. So, here. Do your job.”

Rience shrugs his doublet off and throws it at her. Zelda catches it as it flies through the air, curtsies and mumbles “Yes, sir,” and disappears off.

If Jaskier thought the hour he’d spent with Rience was agonising before, it was nothing compared to the horrific anticipation of the ten minutes that passed as they waited for Zelda’s return. What the fuck is she playing at? Rience still prattled on, and Jaskier listened just enough to answer sensibly, though his mind was almost entirely elsewhere. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified when the door eased open and Zelda re-entered the room.

“Here you go, master mage. Good as new.” She held the doublet out to Rience, who snatched it from her and shrugged it back on without so much looking at it. Zelda moved back to the door. As she went, a look of panic bloomed on Rience’s face. Hastily, he dipped his hand into his pocket, visibly relaxing when his questing fingers found what they were looking for. As she left, Zelda flashed him a triumphant smirk over her shoulder.

Jaskier’s stomach sank as he realised he knew what that pocket of Rience’s held. It was the pocket he reached for when he wanted to persuade Jaskier to divulge sensitive information.

Bollocks.

As soon as Rience releases him, Jaskier returns to his apartments to wait. He’s not kept long before Zelda joins him.

“Afternoon,” he greets her neutrally. “I don’t suppose you’d listen if I told you that whatever you’re doing is dangerous and stupid, would you?”

She shakes her head, corner of her mouth turning up in amusement.

He shrugs. “It was worth a try.”

Suddenly she is close, crowding into his space. She smells of lavender and soap, with an underlayer of sweat. A dusting of freckles covers her nose. 

“Touch your left ear, my lord,” she says.

Jaskier feels his brow crease in confusion. “Eh?”

Zelda’s hand disappears into her apron pocket, comes out and brandishes something in his face. He makes out a sphere of woven grass, a flash of silver wiring and yellow petals.

Fuck.

She’d stolen the charm! Taken it from Rience’s doublet when she took it for “cleaning” and replaced it with a decoy so the mage wouldn’t get suspicious…

Ooh, she’s good. He’d want to shake her hand if he wasn’t so terrified of what was about to happen.

But what should he do? Obviously the bunch of woven greenery wasn’t controlling him, it never had… but he couldn’t allow that to get out. He’d have to play along, then somehow get it back and swap the decoy she’d left with Rience for the real fake charm…

Gods, when did his life get so complicated? He just wanted to travel and sing songs for adoring crowds, for Lilvani’s sake. 

He reached up and tugged on his left ear, reluctantly, as if fighting the compulsion.

“Look, Zelda, I don’t know what you think you’re doing…”

The joy on her face told him, too late, that he’d fallen for something.

“What I’m doing, Viscount Julian, is confirming a theory.”

Jaskier is perplexed, anxious. It’s that moment where you’ve overbalanced and you’re about to fall over a cliff edge, and you’re not tumbling yet but you know you will and the worst part is that there’s nothing you can do to stop it…

“What theory might that be?”

“That you’re only pretending to be under Rience’s control.”

Jaskier’s mouth drops open.

“What?!”

Zelda laughs, holds up what’s in her hand for him to inspect. It’s a charm woven from grass, wire, and a flower. But it’s not the charm woven from grass, wire, and a flower. The pattern of the weave is wrong. Jaskier recognises the wire from a little kit that every Redanian spy carries, full things that are useful for breaking into secure buildings or silencing an enemy. The yellow flower isn’t even a buttercup.

Jaskier bites down on his tongue. Shit, he thinks admiringly. She’s that good. 

“You see, if the charm that Rience uses was real, you’d have picked up that mine was fake from the lack of magical enforcement. If you were truly bewitched, you’d have known the fake instantly. But you didn’t – you even did what I told you, my lord! Why?”

“Psychological reflex?” he suggests weakly, because he has to try. “Maybe I’ve been under Rience’s control for so long that just the idea of the charm is enough to…”

“I don’t think so.” She interrupts, waving an impatient hand. “So tell me, really: why are you pretending to be enthralled to Rience? Tell me, or I’ll head over to the mage right now and tell him that his tame Viscount isn’t so tame after all. What do you say, Jaskier?”

Oh. She called him by his name. His true name. She’s the only person – other than Yenn and Geralt, that day they brought him here – to have done that in months. Even though he’s being threatened, it’s like a cool breeze on a hot day. It reminds him that he is still himself, settles him in his own skin a little. He’s seen.

“Fine,” he says through gritted teeth. “A few months ago, I was on the road and Rience captured, interrogated and tortured me on the orders of some unknown boss. I’m pretending to be under his influence to find out who he’s working for and why they thought that some travelling bard was worth going to all that trouble for. It’s just revenge, Zelda. Nothing exciting.”

She lowers her fake charm, tilting her head to the side as if considering whether to believe him.

“You’ve been at it a while. You haven’t got the information yet? Not that good at this, are you, Jaskier?”

Jaskier laughs. “At least I know better than to go hanging ribbons on blasted oak trees.”

He wins a smile from her for that.

“Fair enough.”

“Are we done, Zelda? Because lovely as your company is, someone’s bound to miss my sparkling wit and sterling conversation sooner rather than later…”

“Not quite, Jaskier. I have another question. Who are the two prisoners in the basement cells?”

Something in Jaskier that had softened slightly hardens once more.

“Ah. No one important, some murderer and his accomplice.” The nonchalance that floods his words is enough to float a ship.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh? That’s a shame. I’d advise you to reconsider.” 

Jaskier lets his eyes travel downwards, to where he’s holding an Orion in such a way that one deft flick of his fingers could see it buried between her eyebrows in less than a second.

Zelda inspects it impassively, then lets her eyes drop further as she says “I’d do some reconsidering myself, if I were you.”

Jaskier follows her gaze to the source of a scratching sensation on his abdomen, so mild that he hadn’t picked up on it until now. It’s the point of Zelda’s dagger, its very tip resting just one thin layer of clothing away from his soft stomach.

“Ah.”

Oh, but she’s excellent. She’s a fucking delight. This is the most fun he’s had in years.

They eye each other for another long moment.

“Truce?” Jaskier suggests.

“Truce,” Zelda agrees. They put their weapons away at the same time, Zelda’s dagger disappearing into the folds of her skirt and becoming just as invisible as Jaskier’s Orion once it’s back in his sleeve.

“Stay away from Rience,” Jaskier says. “Please. He’s a fool, he doesn’t know anything of use. If he did, I’d have got it out of him by now. But he is vicious, and if he spots you for who you are he will kill you. And that would be a shame.”

He sees her weigh his words.

“I can handle him.”

“I’ve no doubt,” Jaskier agrees. “But he only needs to get lucky once. It happened to me, and I’d have died if someone hadn’t come along and saved me.”

“Hmm.”

“You could work with me?” Jaskier suggests, hopefully. “I know what it’s like working for Dijkstra. Suffocating, mostly. Why don’t you leave the RSS like I did? I could use someone like you on my side.”

Zelda shakes her head. “Dijkstra won’t be around forever – certainly not if I have anything to do with it. Once he’s gone, the Service will need a leader. I have someone in mind.”

Jaskier laughs. “I believe you! Freya help anyone who goes against Redania if that capable person ends up taking the helm. By the way, what did you do to Helga so you could inherit her job for the day? Nothing permanent I hope.”

Zelda shakes her head. “No, nothing permanent. She’s just got a stomach ache. She’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“Oh. Well, that’s a relief.” 

Zelda smiles. “I’d still like to know who the prisoners are.”

Jaskier’s face goes stony before he can stop it. He feels like he ages three decades in the few seconds of silence that engulf the room after Zelda’s words die away.

“I told you, they’re no one. If that sensible person wants to outlive Dijkstra, they ought to listen when someone tells them certain answers that are for the good of everyone.”

Zelda shrugs. “Fair enough.” She turns to leave, crossing the patterned rug with a light step.

She pauses with a hand on the doorknob. The smirk is back, mocking him over her shoulder once more.

“Game on, Jaskier.”


	7. Time and Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we find out who Rience is working for

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR spoiler warnings for both books and probably The Witcher series, as who Rience is working for is one of the key points of the story.
> 
> also CW violence

A light step flits past Geralt’s cell door towards the guard room, waking him from something that could only have been called sleep on a technicality. Whoever it is, they don’t even slow down as they pass by his cell.

The cold of the dungeon has seeped into every one of Geralt’s bones. It crawled around inside them, finding each of the many places where they had broken and knitted together again and sinking its fangs in. The ache that results is almost more unbearable than the original breaks.

Through the din of his pain, Geralt made out the sound of more footsteps approaching. For an horrific moment, he thinks it might be Viscount Julian, back for round two. He relaxes marginally when he realises that the treat is unfamiliar, lacking Jaskier’s tendency to tread harder on his left heel.

The steps halt outside Geralt’s cell door.

“Open this one!” Calls a voice. The tone is strange, as if the person speaking is struggling slightly to form words with a mouth that doesn’t fully want to cooperate.

“Yes, master mage,” Geralt hears Griveld simper from the corridor.

The mage. Well. At least he can’t be worse than Viscount Julian, Geralt thinks.

Jaskier is enjoying his first Rience-free morning in a long while. He’s sat on the grass at the edge of the lawn, back pressed against the bark of a tree. His fingers tap against his knee where his hands rest, soothing himself by plucking at imaginary lute strings so he doesn’t forget his repertoire. There’s a minor worry about what Zelda might do occupying the back of his brain, but that’s being soothed by the sunlight warming his closed eyelids and the gentle breeze that keeps the day on just the right side of too hot. 

He’s managed not to think about what he said to Geralt in minutes and, while the memory is still a gnawing pit of self-hatred that’s tearing at his very soul, it’s at least manageable

He’s annoyed to have his mostly pleasant morning interrupted by Felix and Moritz, returning from a hunt with several pheasants hanging from their belts.

“That’s a brilliant weapon, Felix,” Jaskier hears Moritz gush. “I’ve never seen you drop so many birds so quickly! Where’d you get it?”

Felix strokes the crossbow at his side, smug. “I bought it in town last night.”

“With what coin!? I thought you were as skint as me.” Moritz isn’t even trying to hide his jealousy. Felix preens.

“It turns out the mage hadn’t heard about the prisoners in the dungeon. I clued him in. He’s always very generous to people who give him new information…”

Jaskier doesn’t hear the rest of the speech. He’s already up, his legs getting themselves under him and haring over the lawn and to the house before his mind has a chance to creak into gear.

Rience knows about the prisoners. Rience knows about Geralt and Ciri.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 

Jaskier skids to a halt outside the door to the basement prison, wrenches it open and throws himself down the stairs without stopping to catch his breath.

He forces himself to slow down at the bottom of the stairs, creeping along the corridor so as not to give himself away. The door to Geralt’s cell is thrown open, the room behind it empty. From the wall it shares with the cell that holds Ciri, Geralt can hear a frantic tapping.

Five knocks, quick succession: where are you?

Fuck the gods, she’s terrified. He can’t leave her… but he can’t abandon Geralt to whatever’s happening, either…

He pauses to tap a response: two taps, a pause, three taps. It means: it’s okay.

Praying that he hasn’t just made himself a liar, he moves on towards the door to the guards’ breakroom. Lantern light spills around the door, and a murmur of voices betrays its inhabitants; the wheedling tones of Rience, interspersed with deep grunts from a Witcher’s throat.

He takes a deep breath, and steps inside.

“Ah, Julian! So kind of you to join us.” Rience’s eyes are flashing in a way that only happens when he’s feeling triumphant. An amulet waves as it dangles from a chain in his hand. “I heard last night that we were housing two guests down here. So, this morning, I thought I’d come down and see who the villain evil enough to bother the Viscount de Lettenhove actually was. And do you know what I’ve found out?”

Jaskier’s eyes slip to Geralt. He can’t help it. The Wolf is still bound, lying on the floor in a haphazard way as if thrown there. When he makes eye contact with Jaskier, Geralt flinches – actually flinches – away, despite the impossibility of moving anywhere when trussed up as he is.

Jaskier’s throat closes.

“I found out who this is. Geralt of Rivia, the famous White Wolf of song and legend!”

Jaskier’s head shakes compulsively. Fuck, Geralt, why have you told Rience of all people… 

“No, it’s not. It’s not him.” It’s all Jaskier can think to say.

He can’t think. He can’t fucking think. Panic is cutting off every instinct, every practised response. He can’t come up with anything but he has to because if he doesn’t then Geralt will fucking die and it will be all his fault…

Rience laughs. “Oh, but it is. Which means that you’ve been keeping things from me, Julian. And I thought we were so close. Don’t you know that hurts my feelings?”

“I didn’t know you had any to hurt,” Jaskier shoots back. It’s the best he can do right now, terror making his knees weak.

“Very good, Julian. But the fact remains that you’ve been hiding things from me. And you know that can’t go unpunished.”

“Well, come on, then,” Jaskier draws himself up and looks Rience dead in the eyes in an unmistakable challenge. It’s the only thing he can think of that might work; keep Rience focused on him, hurting him, because if he’s hurting Jaskier then he can’t be hurting Geralt…

“Hmm. Later. Now that I’ve finally got my hands on this wretched mutant, I’ll be talking to him first. And you can sit there like a good boy and enjoy the show.”

Rience makes to turn back to Geralt, and Jaskier’s entire being screams. He splutters out the first words that come to his head, and they trip over themselves in their haste to be spoke.

“You can’t torture him!”

Rience rolls his eyes. “I think you’ll find I can.”

“No, I mean you can’t,” Jaskier’s pleading now. “Witchers have a quirk in their biology that means that if they’re tortured, a vein in their brain ruptures and they die immediately. You won’t get any information out of him even if you try.”

The sound of betrayal that comes out of Geralt’s mouth flays him to the very core. I’m sorry, Jaskier cries internally. I know you told me that in confidence. I know you’d rather die than tell Rience anything, but I can’t let it happen. I won’t. You’re no good to Ciri if you’re dead.

Rience smirks at Jaskier, holds up the pendant that still dangles from his wrist. “I know about that particular mutant failsafe. So does my employer. That’s why they gave me this. It’s an amulet to prevent the rupture of blood vessels, with its power dialled up to compensate for a Witcher’s resistance to magic.”

Something moves in Jaskier’s peripheral vision. He keeps his expression and gaze steady, so as not to betray the movement to Rience…

“Oh, Vilgefortz will be so pleased when I report back that I’ve found not only the Witcher, but where he’s sequestered Cirilla too. He’ll reward me so generously…”

A twang of breaking wire, the last of the strands of dimeritium woven through the ropes that bound Geralt snapping against a dagger, causes Rience to turn. 

Rience’s neck spurts red around the Orion that had buried itself deep in his flesh. At the same time Jaskier heard the mage’s breath pushed out of him as Zelda’s knife, done with cutting Geralt’s ropes, buries itself in Rience’s back.

Jaskier surges forwards, grabbing Rience around the waist and forcing him to the ground. He gets a firm grip on the mage’s wrist, forcing the silence-ring against the mage’s own jaw to put an instant end to his screams. Then he compels the mage’s hands down, stripping them of rings and the amulet, and finally kneels on Rience’s hands so they’re pinned immobile to the floor.

“How d’you like that, Rience? Eh? Can’t call for help without your voice, can you? Can’t cast any borrowed magic without being able to make the Signs, hmm?”

Rience, unable to make a sound, only stared wildly at Jaskier from the ground. Blood begins to pool under his body from the wounds in his neck and back.

Just as Jaskier’s thoughts begin to catch up with him, most importantly the one that goes “what the fuck do I do now?”, the dingy room lights up for a moment from the glow given off by a swirling portal. A figure in black and white steps through it, and it snaps instantly shut behind her.

“Yenn!” The name is pure relief to speak. “Rience is working for…”

“Vilgefortz,” Yennefer finishes for him.

Jaskier’s mouth drops open. “How did you know?! He’s only just told me for fuck’s sake!”

Yennefer glares at Rience for a moment, pinned to the floor by Jaskier’s weight. Her face gets that look it wears when she’s listening to the thoughts of someone around her, and does not like what she hears.

“It’s obvious, really. I can’t believe it took me this long to work it out.”

“Oh, well, if it’s so obvious perhaps you’d like to share it with the rest of us!?” Jaskier is not hysterical, but only just. Rience wriggles underneath him, and Jaskier tightens his grip on the injured mage.

“Hmm? Oh. The intelligence that’s making its way from the South says that Battle of Sodden Hill was fought against direct orders from the Emperor of Nilfgaard. His Generals got out of hand and wanted to push forwards, overextend themselves before the South could support such an attack. The Emperor wanted the attack stopped.

“And who stepped forward and halted the Nilfgaardian troops before they could go too far, saving them from a much more thorough and embarrassing threat later on? Vilgefortz. And with the added bonus of wiping out most of the Northern mages who could hope to stand against him, once he revealed who he was really allied with.”

Jaskier automatically turns his head to Geralt, to check that he’s hearing this as well. It’s a gut punch to see that Geralt is still lying where he was before, despite being freed by Zelda. The Witcher’s gaze darts between Jaskier, Yenn and Rience as if they are all the same. As if they were all in league against him.

Yenn follows Jaskier’s gaze. She hums in discontent when she sees the state that Geralt is in, bloodied and filthy and broken on the bare stone floor.

Yenn kneels beside Jaskier. She sweeps her gaze over Rience where he lies as if sizing him up. Then she extends one hand towards Geralt, and touches Rience’s forehead with the tips of the fingers of her other hand.

Rience can’t scream, but Jaskier feels the mage’s ribs tense beneath him in a good attempt at it. He stares down in amazement as Rience’s nose cracks and breaks with no apparent outward force. Cuts open all along his face and neck. Filth spreads across the mage’s skin like a rash.

Jaskier looks up at Yenn questioningly. She jerks her head ever-so-slightly in the direction of Geralt. Jaskier stares at the Witcher, who’s now sitting perfectly clean and unhurt on the dungeon floor.

“You… you transferred the injuries from Geralt to Rience?” Jaskier asks, feeling unbearably slow.

Yennefer nods.

“Fuck, Yenn, that’s diabolical. I love it.” Jaskier reaches out and hugs her to him, kissing her full on the lips because he can’t not. To his delight, she kisses him back, hungry and claiming.

They break apart, and Jaskier looks down. Rience is pale from blood loss, breathing shallow and eyelids fluttering as he barely clings to consciousness. He reaches down and pulls the Orion from the mage’s throat, letting the blood escape more quickly.

“It’s a better death than you deserve,” he informs the mage. Rience twitches a few more times, and is still.

A gravelly voice speaks from the corner.

“What the fuck?!”

“What the fuck?!” Geralt demands. 

The Viscount and Yennefer exchange looks and stand up, ignoring the dead mage at their feet. Julian’s knees are still dark and sticky where he’s been kneeling in the man’s blood.

“Hello, Geralt,” Yenn says in that voice she uses when she’s trying to pretend to not be pleased to see someone. “You’re welcome.”

“Welcome!?” Geralt spits.

“Yes, you’re welcome. The dearly departed Rience, there, has been hunting you and Ciri across the Continent for months. He caught up with Jaskier a while ago, so we decided to find out who the little shit was working for. To protect you. You could at least look grateful about it.”

This is too much to take in. He hasn’t seen either of them in over a year, he’s missed them more than anything, and all he can think to say to is…

“How did you know to come here, right now?”

He asked Yennefer, but Julian answers the question.

“Oh, she picked up on my emotional signal. You see, she mapped my algorithm and build a matrix that can…”

Yenn is looking at him with an expression that’s half fond, half surprised. Julian notices.

“What? I didn’t understand when you told me, so I looked it up. And may I say it’s a bloody impressive piece of magic. Although, now that you have my algorithm can I please request that you don’t use it for anything nefarious? I read that you can do some awful things with it, like turning me into a jade figurine or something…”

“Enough,” Geralt grunts. “Why were you lying to me all this time, Julian?”

The Viscount’s mouth snaps shut, hurt and resignation taking over his face. Yennefer moves so that she’s angled slightly in front of him, as if to protect him, and speaks in sharp tones.

“He wasn’t lying. He was acting. It’s an artform in itself, Geralt, and therefore serves a Higher Truth that is Beauty…”

Julian’s face morphs to joy. “Yennefer! You were listening!” 

They grin at each other, and then turn back to Geralt. Julian’s arm is slung around Yenn’s waist and her hand rests possessively on his shoulder. They look like a united front. They look like a team.

When the fuck did this happen? How long was he locked up?

“I’m going to get Ciri,” he growls, “and then someone is going to tell me what the fuck is happening.”

He doesn’t get his request granted immediately. They do go and release Ciri, though. Geralt holds her hand as Julian leads them through the huge and opulent house. Geralt stays between her and the Viscount, tensed for an attack.

As they travel through the passages and rooms, they pass several servants. At each one, Yenn glances at Julian who either nods or shakes his head. Those he nods at are allowed to go about their business, which apparently involves staring open-mouthed at the group of people their lord is leading through the corridor. Those unlucky enough to receive a head shake disappear with a click of Yenn’s fingers.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” She grumbles from her place beside Julian. “They’re just getting a nice close-up look at that lovely cell you’ve been staying in recently. They were in league with Rience. I’m not hurting them.” That last sentence ends with the unspoken word: yet.

They finally arrive at a huge and fashionable sitting room. Geralt doesn’t care about trends, but he did learn some things during the year he lived with Yenn and he can recognise expense and style when he sees it. He still has no idea why the fuck they are there.

“Tell me now,” he demands as he sits on a sofa with Ciri, just happening to be blocking Julian’s view of her. Ciri tries to lean around him to look at the room and pick at the food that’s been laid on the coffee table in front of them, but he reaches out and gently pushes her behind him once more.

Geralt listens as, bickering and interrupting each other, Yennefer and Julian fill him in on what happened: Rience had approached the Viscount and asked about the location of Geralt and Cirilla of Cintra. Yenn had been passing and interrupted their conversation, and they had hatched a plot to find out who was looking for the Witcher and his Child Surprise, and why. Yenn took over as she explained that Geralt’s arrival was the last thing they had anticipated, and how Julian had had to take measures to stop them from being discovered and the whole plan coming to nothing.

Geralt grunted at this, privately thinking that “measures” was a pretty nice word for what Julian has done.

“And who’s she?” Geralt twitched his head to the woman who had cut his bindings and followed them here, now standing leaning against the wall. She was dressed like a maid, but she was as relaxed as if she owned the place.

Yenn’s eyes narrowed at the woman. “Good point.” She rose, shaking out her hands a little as if getting ready to cast.

Julian jumps in front of her, raising his arms as if to hold her back himself. As if he could.

“No. Yenn, no! Please? Don’t hurt her.”

Yenn rolls her eyes at him, but to Geralt’s surprise she stops approaching the maid like a cat stalking a baby bird.

“She’s Dijkstra’s agent.” Yenn said as if this covered everything.

“Yes. But she also helped. She untied Geralt, distracted Rience. It was her dagger in his back when you got here.”

“Oh.” Yenn finally lowers her hands, though she doesn’t exactly look trusting. “Well, anyone who stabbed that pissant can’t be so bad. Especially if they also know how to keep secrets.”

“Oh, Zelda’s wonderful at keeping secrets, aren’t you Zelda?” Julian is still tensed to jump between Yenn and the woman in the maid’s outfit.

Geralt groans; he recognises the Viscount’s tone of voice, knows what’s happening here. She’s another of the kids that Julian wants to adopt; he’ll be calling her his sister and insisting on going miles out of their way for visits and to deliver birthday presents before the day is out.

“That’s right.” Zelda raises her chin. “I was hiding in the guard room to listen in and find out who the prisoners were, and ended up learning a lot more than I expected to. I didn’t like the way that Rience was carrying on, so I thought I’d help out your Witcher friend over there. But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your White Wolf, or his ward. There are some things that Dijkstra doesn’t need to know. He doesn’t always make the best decisions, so sometimes it’s best to protect him from himself.”

“See, Yenn?” Julian beams.

“But I will pass on Vilgefortz’s affiliations. Redania will certainly be very interested about that. I think we’ll need to do something about it.”

Geralt’s left in very little doubt about what “something” would be done. He’s grateful that Ciri seems too distracted by the food and surroundings to pick up on Zelda’s meaning.

Yenn smooths back some of her curls. “Don’t touch Vilgefortz. He’s mine.”

Zelda smiles. “You’ll have to beat me to him, then.”

Julian is in heaven, bursting with pride over some agent who, knowing the Viscount, had been trying to kill him until recently. She probably almost succeeded. Geralt almost wishes she had.

Is that unfair? He’s not sure. His head is still spinning too fast for him to work out how he feels, and the things Julian said to him in the dungeon a few days ago keep rising to the top of the swirling mess of his thoughts.

“Geralt? Are you alright?” 

Geralt’s eyes snap open again. Julian is standing right in front of him, full of concern. He steps back smartly when he sees Geralt’s expression, but he doesn’t smell scared. He just smells anxious, and very tired.

“I’m fine. I need a bath. And rest.”

The Viscount is flustered, his hands flitting everywhere – to his doublet, his hair, his pockets and back – as he speaks.

“Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll have a bath brought to your room. Come on through this way…”

Julian takes them to a very comfortable apartment. Geralt had worried that they would try and split him and Ciri up, but there are two beds in the room. Ciri jumps onto one of them immediately, burrowing down into the blankets and pillows until only a hint of her dyed-brown hair is visible.

Jaskier hovers at the door.

“If you need anything else – anything at all, Geralt – just let me know. Will you tell me, if you need anything?”

The bath is already steaming in the corner. Geralt pulls off the hideous yellow tunic and throws it onto the fire. 

“Goodbye, Viscount Julian.”

The Viscount’s face shutters closed. It reminds Geralt of the look he had when he’d shouted at the bard on the mountain, and guilt twists in his gut for a moment. He kills it; what he’d done on the dragon hunt wasn’t even in the same league as what had been to him over the last few days.

Julian turns to go, his hand on the doorknob. He pauses.

“See you around, Geralt.”

Geralt doesn’t even grunt in response. The Viscount leaves, taking the pungent smell of misery and remorse with him. Geralt throws the rest of his clothes in the fire and sinks into the bath, letting the heat slowly sink into him and chase the damp frigidness of the dungeon away.

When he finally feels halfway clean, he dries off and puts on some loose black clothing he finds laid out. It’s not what he was wearing when he arrived, but it’s the least objectionable thing he’s worn in a while, comfortable and durable. It would fit well under his armour.

Geralt falls face-first onto the bed that’s not occupied by Ciri. He falls asleep to the steady inhale-exhale of her slumbering breath. He wakes once, in the night, to find that Ciri has joined him, burrowed under his arm. He hugs her tighter and goes back to sleep.


	8. You Deserve Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> readjustment takes place

Geralt wakes suddenly, jerking upright with a twist in his stomach. Ciri’s gone.

He takes a moment to push down the panic that’s trying to rise within him, inhaling sharply to scent the air for her trail.

He follows his nose along the corridor and down the stairs to an external door, lets himself into the garden. The breeze has disturbed her scent outside, replacing it with the smells of this place: oak trees, leaf mulch, ferns and pheasant shit. Geralt stills and listens instead.

He catches Ciri’s laugh. She’s standing at the edge of the lawn, where the grass gives way to forest. Geralt tenses when he sees who she’s with.

“You’re really a bard?” She asks Julian, wide-eyed.

“Oh, yes. Or at least, I was until recently…” the usual flow of his words halts for a moment, a river coming up against an unexpected obstacle. He recovers. “How about you? Do you sing? Your name suits a singer.”

Ciri’s fingers tangle. “Yeah, it means Swallow. I don’t sing… there is something I can do with my voice, though.”

The Viscount beams at her. “A woman of talent! What is it? Ventriloquism? Ooh, or do you throw your voice? I had a friend who could do that once and she…”

“It’s easier if I show you,” Ciri cuts him off. The side of Geralt’s mouth comes up in a smirk. She’s a quick learner – she’s obviously noticed that the only way to get a word in edgeways with Julian is by force.

Julian gives her a sweeping bow. “Please do, by all means!”

Ciri inhales through her nose, then opens her mouth… and lets it out.

Julian gets up from the ground ten feet from away, where he was thrown when she unleashed her Power. Geralt uncovers his ears.

“…Wow. That’s… that’s quite the talent, I must say!” the Viscount was wearing black yesterday, Geralt remembers. Today he’s back to his usual garish colours, too bright in the morning sun. Julian is brushing his clothes off absent-mindedly, a thoughtful look on his face.

Cir covers her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to throw you…”

“Oh please, don’t apologise! Never apologise for talent. It’s amazing, truly. But you know, I think you could probably produce a more powerful blast with a bit of training.”

Ciri stares at him with guarded eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Well, when you’re singing and you want your words to reach the whole room, even the people at the back, you have to sing from here.” Julian indicates his diaphragm with his hand. “If you shout from there, rather than your throat or chest, it’ll be much stronger.”

He demonstrates how to breathe into the stomach, rather than the chest, resting his hand on his belly so Ciri can see it expand.

“You try,” he says.

Ciri inhales deeply, chest and stomach expanding as she fills with air. She opens her mouth.

Geralt is already at a full sprint. He reaches the Viscount just before Ciri can make a sound. He falls on top of Julian, shielding him from the blast, and covers his own ears just in time.

It seems a long time before the noise has finally died away and Geralt dares to look up. Ciri is staring open-mouthed around her. Geralt follows suit, and swears. The trees for at least half a mile are completely levelled, a perfect semi-circle of the forest taken out in a graceful arc. He hears a tinkling and looks behind him to see that every window in the house has smashed, the glass falling in shards from the window frames.

“Er…” says a small voice from below him.

Geralt looks down and meets the Viscount’s eyes for the first time since the dungeon. Julian is lying there, apparently unbothered to be pinned to the ground by a very heavy Witcher. He’s completely limp, neither tensed in anticipation nor fighting the weight that’s keeping him pressed into the dirt in his fine silks. He’s looking up at Geralt, the man who could kill him in half a moment without expending any effort at all, but he doesn’t look or smell scared. All there is in his face is… trust.

Geralt gets up quickly, stepping towards Ciri. Julian starts breathing again, pushes himself to his feet and addresses Ciri.

“Well done! That was fantastic! If we keep working it’ll be even better, I think. Also, if we adjust your posture just slightly – it’s very good as it is, but with a little tweak you’ll be able to get more oomph I’m sure…”

“Jaskier!” Yenn calls from a broken window on the first floor. “Do you think we could limit these lessons to theory until a more reasonable time of day? And until I come up with a way to scream-proof the house? I’m not using up my Chaos every time you give a lesson. And a shower of broken glass is not my favourite way to get woken up.”

Julian gives her a wave. “Sorry, Yenn!”

Yenn looks at Ciri. “Hey, kid. Want to help me repair the havoc Jaskier just wreaked by doing something impulsive without thinking things through? You’ll have to get used to it if you’re hanging around.”

Ciri is staring at Yennefer with awe. “You mean… help you repair the house by magic?”

Yenn smiles. It’s a little crooked, as always. Geralt feels a tug in his chest which he tamps down instantly.

“Yes. But first, coffee.”

Ciri turns to Geralt, face animated with excitement. “Can I?”

Geralt can’t say no. “Yes.”

Ciri gives him a grin, turns and runs back towards the house. Yenn closes her window, which is miraculously – or magically, rather – back in one piece.

Seeing Ciri happy causes an unfamiliar warmth in Geralt’s stomach. He reaches out towards it, cautiously.

Julian clears his throat. Geralt spins around, crouched in anticipation. The Viscount raises his hands, palms forwards, in surrender.

“Geralt, I… I know it’s not enough. But I’m sorry. I just want you to know that.”

Geralt stands slightly straighter, but doesn’t let down his guard. “What for?”

Julian looks wretched and, for once, says nothing.

Vesemir’s voice in his head: when your enemy is on the back foot, that is not the time for mercy. You keep them there, wolfcub. Push them harder. 

“Well, Viscount Julian? For taking my clothes and dressing me like a clown? For taking my hair? What are you sorry for?”

“Everything,” Julian breathes. For a moment Geralt is reminded of Yenn when she fought the Djinn, contorted by agony and exhaustion and screaming at him when asked what she wants.

“For the things you said?” Geralt asks, voice hard.

Julian looks like he might faint. He looks like he might cry. He holds it back. Geralt is glad; he doesn’t deserve to do those things. They’d be a catharsis, an easy way out that the Viscount doesn’t deserve.

The scents of sorrow and remorse and resignation are rolling off Julian in waves. Geralt wrinkles his nose against them.

Julian looks him in the eye, finally. “I had to change how you look because you’re too recognisable. Half the Continent’s looking for you. You’re only safe if you’re hidden. Ciri’s only safe if you’re hidden.

“And what I said… I’m sorry. Geralt, I truly am. The guards were suspicious. I had to make them believe me, believe who I was pretending to be. you might not believe me, but I do regret it. But I’m not sorry that, in the moment, it kept you safe.”

The knot of distrust in Geralt’s gut loosens slightly, but it doesn’t disperse. He takes a half step towards Julian that’s not entirely intentional. He expects the Viscount to try to close the distance between them, as he always does. But Julian stays exactly where he is, waiting for Geralt to choose what happens next if and when he’s ready.

He’s not ready.

He turns on his heel and follows Ciri back inside. Julian stays where he is, at the edge of the blasted treeline where the birds haven’t yet dared start singing again. He’s upwind, and the scent of his guilt chases Geralt all the way back to the house.

Geralt is just about getting his bearings in this ridiculous stately home. It helps that the perfume of lilac and gooseberries, as well as Ciri’s more subtle scent, lead him to another door.

He can hear Ciri’s voice on the other side of the wood, high-pitched like she’s worked up. Her heartbeat is elevated.

He bursts through the door all at once, ready to fight.

Ciri freezes mid-wild gesticulation, the end of her sentence dying on her lips. In front of her, the table is laden with every conceivable breakfast food. Yenn sits opposite her, her plate piled high with one of everything on offer.

Yennefer takes in his defensive stance, ready to fend off any possible attack. She raises an eyebrow.

“It’s just breakfast, Geralt. It can’t hurt you.” 

Geralt looks at Ciri, questioning.

“Hi, Geralt!” she smiles at him, but there’s a wobble in it. His chest constricts; he’s made her uncomfortable. “I was just telling Yennefer about the werewolf you fought the other day…”

Geralt groans. Yenn will never let him live that one down…

Yennefer looks at Ciri’s plate, where the remnants of a very hearty breakfast are lying. 

“Are you done with breakfast, ugly duckling?” Yenn asks.

Geralt’s about to protest, but Yenn is looking at Ciri with so much affection that his complaint never makes it past his larynx. She looked at Julian like that last night, Geralt realises. He’s not sure how he feels about that.

Ciri doesn’t seem to mind the nickname.

“Yes, I’m done. I’m stuffed!”

“In that case, would you give me and Geralt some space? We need to talk about a few things. I’m sure you can find some trouble to get into to keep yourself occupied.”

Ciri glances at Geralt. He nods. No harm could come to Ciri in a house that Yenn’s occupying. Ciri slips from the table and leaves, closing the door softly behind her.

They stare at each other for a long moment. They’ve not been alone together since the mountain. The guilt still feels fresh, like it always does, a wound that refuses to scab over.

He knows better to apologise to her. She’s wearing a masculine-cut tunic over leggings, her obsidian star at her throat as always. Gods, he’s missed her… Geralt squashes that thought. He has no right to it.

In the end, lacking a better idea, he sits and starts piling food on his plate and shovelling it into his mouth.

He wishes she’d say something. He’s not good at conversation, especially starting them. If it were Julian, he’d find the perfect topic to get everyone talking and carry the chatter most of the way until Geralt found his feet and an opening he could jump into. But Yenn has never been like that. Why make things easy on people? As she pointed out to him once. The world isn’t easy.

“Since when do you and Julian get on?” he asks when the silence has stretched halfway through his second plateful.

“Why don’t you get on with Jaskier anymore?” She counters. “It seems loyal friends are few and far between these days. Shouldn’t you hang on to the only one you have?”

“Hn,” he says, meaning no.

“Or you could keep being stubborn. Because that’s working well so far.”

“You don’t know what happened,” Geralt means to say it without intonation, but the venom seeps from his voice. He raises a hand and rubs it over his head where the hair is starting to grow back through.

Yenn picks up her coffee and regards him over the rim. “Have you considered that you might not know all of what happened, either?”

Geralt takes his time chewing a rasher of bacon, swallows. It’s salty and delicious, cooked exactly how he likes it. “What do you mean?”

It’s too early in the morning for anyone to smoulder, but Yennefer manages it as she glares at him over his cooling breakfast. “Ask him yourself. Ask him what happened when Rience caught up with him on the road.”

Geralt rolls his eyes. “You told me yesterday. Rience tried to bribe him…”

Yenn puts down her empty coffee cup, her rage palpable in the air. The gentle clink as it hits the saucer is somehow louder than if she had thrown it to the floor. 

“Do what you want, Geralt.”

She sweeps out of the room. He wants more than anything to follow her. 

He stays and finishes his breakfast.

In the afternoon, he and Ciri explore the grounds. It’s not long before Ciri finds a training yard.

She looks up at him, looking like Belleteyn came early. “Can we?”

Geralt grunts the affirmative, finding himself a training sword and a blade of an appropriate length for Ciri by rummaging in a cupboard in the outhouse that sits just to the side of the ring. He sets her to work on the dummy that stands at one end of the yard, gently correcting her technique every now and again.

She’s quick, and determined, if slightly unfocused. Vesemir will have a lot to says about her technique, and Lambert will tear her to pieces – not that Geralt’s worried, Ciri can give as good as she gets and Lambert may well regret anything he chooses to say to her. Coën and Eskel will be putty in her hands, he knows already. She’ll be ruling Kaer Morhen by the end of her first month there.

He can’t wait for her to meet his brothers, Geralt realises. He’s looking forward to it. To showing her off, showing her the secrets of the keep where he grew up. To seeing the careworn faces of the other Wolves soften as they grow to love her like he has. She’ll be safe at the fortress, he knows. his brothers will protect her with their lives.

Ciri’s attack on the mannequin grows more violent, bringing Geralt back from his reverie. As he watches her attack the wood, sack and straw structure, Geralt realises that it’s stopped being a game. Ciri’s face has changed from the thrill of learning to grim determination and horror, battering at the dummy’s head again and again…

Geralt eases the sword from her hands and gathers her to him, letting her sob into his chest. She wakes up crying and screaming most nights, though she won’t tell him why. This is the same desperate sobbing. He wonders whose face she was imagining on the dummy’s blank head. He wants to know, so he can find that person and kill them.

Gradually, her crying abates. Geralt keeps his hold on her, smoothing her hair with his hand until she breaks away.

“You want to spar with me?” he asks. 

She shakes her head. “Can I go and find Yennefer? She said she’d show me her grimoire.”

“Of course,” he tells her. She gives him a watery smile and goes to leave. She pauses a few feet away, then throws herself back into his arms for one last hug. Then she runs to the house.

Geralt doesn’t know what to do with the swell of emotion that rises within him and threatens to overwhelm him completely. He switches his wooden training sword for his blade of thunderbolt iron and loses himself to practising his swordcraft.

When he returns to himself, the sun has sunk far down in the sky, his muscles are aching and there’s nothing left of the training dummy but splintered wood and a few scraps of sacking that are being blown about the yard in the breeze. There’s a smear of blood on his palms, despite the thick sword calluses he’s built up over the years.

He wipes it away. It doesn’t matter.

He cleans his sword and puts it away in the training shed before wandering back to the house.

He tracks Ciri down. She’s still with Yenn, who’s talking authoritatively about Signs and amulets. 

“Hold your hand like this… no, like this, ugly one… yes, that’s right. It’s called Igni. Witcher signs are a good place to start, because they don’t require any deep understanding of magic, or the memorisation of complex spells. You’re not to use it on anyone, mind you. Unless they deserve it, of course, which I find many people do... Now, once you’ve mastered them we can move on to, let’s see… ah, yes. This is a nice little spell for making someone bite their own tongue off when they insult you…”

Ciri sounds delighted. He doesn’t have the heart to interrupt. He’ll ruin the moment.

He’s about to return to his room when the faint sounds of a lute being played reach his ears. He hesitates for a moment, then follows the music.

Julian is sat in what appears to be a library, balanced on a windowsill with one leg dangling to the floor and looking dramatically out of the window as he plays. It’s an achingly familiar tableau that summons a tiny smile to Geralt’s face without consulting him. He wipes it away.

The Viscount turns slightly. He catches sight of Geralt and jumps, falling from his perch. He twists himself as he falls, holding the lute up to protect it from hitting the floor. This of course means that he can’t use his arms to save himself, and he hits the ground full force with his back and head.

“Bollocks! Ow.”

Julian stands, rubbing the back of his head where it collided with the floorboards. 

“Sorry. Did you want the library? I’ll go…”

The Viscount moves to leave, giving Geralt as wide a berth as possible. Geralt turns to keep Julian in his field of view.

Julian’s hand is on the doorknob when Yenn’s words from this morning start ringing in Geralt’s head. 

“What happened when Rience first met you?”

Julian’s head drops, his shoulders growing even more tense. He doesn’t turn, or let go of the doorknob.

“Yenn explained yesterday,” the Viscount says carefully.

“I want to hear it from you.”

The Viscount sighs and sets his lute against the wall. He turns and leans back against the door, face tight. It makes his crow’s feet and laugh lines stand out in sharper relief than normal. Or maybe he’s just aged since Geralt last had a chance to really look at him.

“It’s not important, Geralt. Rience is dead. We know who unleashed him on the world, and we’re going to take Vilgefortz down before he can hurt Ciri. That’s all that matters.”

“Julian.”

The Viscount starts. He rolls his shoulders and rubs his wrist with one hand reflexively. He hums, as if to prove to himself that his voice still works. He smells like distress. 

None of this makes sense. Geralt grunts in frustration, knows he’s glowering but can’t help it. Most people shy away from him at this point; Julian only gives him a small, fond smile.

“Tell me. You owe me that much, don’t you?” Geralt demands.

Julian’s eyes snap to Geralt’s face. Then they close, as if he can’t stand to see Geralt’s expression. The Viscount’s voice comes as if from far away.

“… he tried to bribe me into telling him where you and Ciri were. When that didn’t work, he became more insistent. I ran, but he sent a paralysing spell after me. He and his henchmen tied my hands behind my back and looped the rope over a ceiling beam and pulled me up off the ground by my wrists. They attached a weight to my ankles so that if they hoisted me up further it would break my hands and shoulders and everything else probably. If Yenn hadn’t arrived when she did I’d definitely be dead.”

Geralt is suddenly having difficulty swallowing around the lump in his throat. He thinks about how he’d let Rience find out who he was down in the cellar prison, because why shouldn’t he? It’s not like he was important, after all.

He’d almost made sure that all of Jaskier’s sacrifice was for nothing. He’d almost landed Ciri in the hands of…

He won’t think it. He can’t.

Geralt wets his lips with his tongue. “Jaskier…”

Jaskier’s eyes spring open. “You… you said my name…”

The musty library air moves. Jaskier still smells mostly of remorse. But there’s something else… hope?

There's one of those swells of emotions again, the kind Geralt doesn't know what to do with. He feels like if he speaks, he'll shatter whatever this moment is and take himself and Jaskier with it. But he can't do nothing, either.

Geralt takes a step forward. He reaches out slowly, like he does to Roach when she’s spooked and needs soothing. He palms the back of Jaskier’s neck, tugs gently. Jaskier follows the wordless instruction instantly, pressing his face into the side of Geralt’s neck and wrapping his arms around Geralt’s torso tentatively at first, and then clinging. Geralt squeezes him back. A hug is not enough, he knows, to express what's he's feeling. To fix what's happened. But maybe it's enough for now.


	9. Always Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> promises and declarations for everyone!

Yennefer sends Ciri to bed when she’s no longer able to stifle her yawns as they continue to pour over the Grimoire.

“We’ll pick this up tomorrow, ugly duckling. Off you go.”

Grumbling slightly and rubbing her eyes, Ciri went.

Yenn stretched. She’d sent out messages to everyone she trusted, asking about Vilgefortz. The questions had been constructed carefully by her and Jaskier, designed to garner information without raising suspicion or giving away what they’d learned from Rience, but she was still uneasy. No one had answered her yet, and she was unlikely to receive any replies before morning. 

Too restless for sleep, she rose from the sofa in her room and headed out into the corridor, heels clicking on the stone floors as she went. They echoed through the quiet house in the way sound only does when everyone else in the building is sleeping – it must be later than she thought.

She sharpened her hearing with a quick spell, the same one she’d used to track down Jaskier when Rience had first got hold of him. She’s just checking. She’s not worried, of course, just curious and bored…

Her magically-enhanced hearing gave her the answer before she’d had a chance to finish justifying things to herself. The library.

Yenn follows the sound of two heartbeats, two sets of breath, both slower in sleep than they are in wakefulness. 

She opens the door and stares at the library sofa that’s lit by the stars shining through the large, high window that Jaskier likes to sit by. Geralt is curled up on the cushions, his head resting on Jaskier’s shoulder. The bard has his arms wrapped protectively around the Witcher’s shoulders, chin propped on the top of Geralt’s head. He’s dribbling on the short hair that’s just starting to grow out on the Witcher’s head, but that’s only fair seeing as Geralt is dribbling on the shoulder of Jaskier’s doublet. The silk will be ruined.

Yenn hovers in the doorway, considering them. When asked, she used to say that she tolerated the bard because he and Geralt came as a package, and she’d rather have Geralt in her life than not. Even at the time, she’d known that wasn’t quite true. When catching sight of Geralt in the distance, she was never actually disappointed to see that he had a dark-haired man with brightly-coloured clothes and a lute in tow. It was nice to have someone to spar with verbally, to keep her entertained when Geralt was too shy or too stubborn to talk.

Now she knows that her connection to Geralt is an illusion. It’s just magic – it’s not real. But she knows Jaskier, now. And maybe… maybe if Jaskier comes as a package with Geralt. Maybe she can tolerate the presence of a Witcher for the sake of Jaskier just as she tolerated the company of a bard for the sake of the White Wolf.

Or, maybe she doesn’t have to justify it to herself. She wants both of them. She wants everything. And she’s never been very good at denying herself. Perhaps it’d be better to give in and let herself take what she wants.

Geralt stirs as Yennefer approaches. She raises her eyebrow at him in challenge as his eyes find her in the gloaming, but his eyelids just flutter closed again. He makes no move to put any distance between himself and Jaskier.

Yenn slots herself in on Jaskier’s other side. The bard shifts slightly to make it easier for her to rest her head on his other shoulder. One of his hands covers hers, twining their fingers together and his thumb rubbing over her skin in a soothing motion.

The horizon is just starting to lighten with the hint of dawn when Yenn wakes. She grimaces as she lifts her head, feeling the ache of a neck that had fallen asleep at the wrong angle. She quickly cures it with a relaxing and heating spell, trying to pinpoint what roused her.

She hears it again: the sound of quickening breath in another part of the house. It’s not something she should be able to hear, and she’s confused until she realises that she fell asleep too quickly to lift the enchantment she’d put on her hearing. Her ears are more sensitive Geralt’s, at the moment, letting her pick up on the sounds of distress that are all too recognisable. The sound of someone having a nightmare.

The soft cry of a familiar voice reached her ears. Yenn corrects herself: the sound of Ciri having a nightmare.

Yennefer eases herself away from Jaskier, who makes a soft noise of protest without waking, and heads for the door.

Ciri’s cries are louder by the time Yennefer reaches her, though still not loud enough to rouse anyone else. In the not-light of this much-too-early morning, Yenn can see glistening trails of tears flowing from Ciri’s eyes and down into her temples. Ciri’s limbs are twitching as she sleeps, as if trying to fight someone off in her dream.

Yenn reaches out and shakes her firmly. No point being gentle about it; the point is to wake her up, after all.

Ciri gasps awake, scrambling backwards on the bed and away from the person who had pulled her from her dream. Perhaps I should have tried to be a little more delicate, Yennefer reflected. Oh well. Too late now.

“…Yennefer?” Ciri asks, her expression morphing from outright fear to trepidation.

“Yes, Ciri. It’s alright. You’re safe. Were you having a nightmare?”

Yennefer’s telepathic powers are always strongest at this time of day. When the world is at its quietest, and a thought can clang as loud as a bell. Ciri’s nightmare flashes up in her mind’s eye, and only Yennefer’s iron self-control stops her from flinching.

It’s Cintra, she realises, though it doesn’t look like it did during any of the times Yenn visited it before. Every building is ablaze, their roofs and walls caving inwards as the fire consumes them. People are screaming, and there are bodies lying prone and broken in the street. Blood has mixed with mud and rainwater to make the streets boggy and treacherous.

A man appears, the wings on the side of his helmet flapping in the wind as his horse charges. He closes in, and a terror that Yenn hasn’t felt in a long time smother’s her scream – Ciri’s scream – in her throat.

Yennefer blinks. Ciri hadn’t meant to show her that, she knows. It wasn’t intentional. But it was too vivid to have all been Yennefer’s doing. She’d known from earlier that the girl has no small amount of Power, but to be able to project such a strong signal with no apparent effort or intention…

Yennefer remembers what it was like to be young and full or fear and Power you don’t know what to do with. Power you can’t control.

She clenches her teeth, resolving that Ciri at least will not have to work it out by herself.

“Officers and commanders of the Nilfgaardian army wear bird wings on their helmets. That narrows it down,” she tells the frightened girl on the bed.

“I… what? How did you know?” Ciri asks.

Yennefer gives her a smile. “You showed me. You didn’t mean to, I know, but you did. It’s a talent, and one that I can show you how to control. Don’t worry, you won’t have shown anyone else; unless you’ve come across another magic user as powerful as me, which I highly doubt.”

Ciri’s hands stop worrying at the blanket.

“Would you like me to teach you how to use your Power, how to bend your Force to your will?”

Ciri’s eyes are wide. “If I do, will I be able to…” she swallows. “Will I be able to stop anyone from… can I make it so no one can touch me?”

Yennefer’s hands twitch automatically into the Sign needed to cast a spell that would decimate any mortal man, and a fair amount of his surrounding area too.

“Yes, little one. And until you learn, as long as I’m around, no one will touch you at all.”

Ciri launches herself at Yennefer, hugging her waist and pressing her head into her chest as if she trusts Yenn to protect her from the world. Yenn hugs her back just as fiercely, strokes her hair where the grey-blonde is starting to grow out at the roots. As her hand passes, the hair merges in colour with the dark brown of the dye.

“When you’re stronger, and after I’ve dealt with someone else… we can take a trip. Would you like that, ugly one? We’ll go and find a certain man with a certain stupid-looking helmet, and we’ll teach him some manners. What do you say?”

Yenn feels Ciri’s own fingers twitch into the sign for Igni. She grins into Ciri’s hair. She’s so fucking proud. She lets some of the feeling melt out into the open, as a test. From the way Ciri sighs, she’s sure the girl picked it up – Melitele, but she really is powerful. 

But she is still a child. “Will you stay until I fall back to sleep?” 

Yenn lies down, arranging herself between Ciri and the door. Yennefer keeps her promises. Anything that wants to get to Ciri will have to go through her first.

“Of course, little one.”

Yenn thinks of peaceful things, projecting them slightly so that Ciri can pick up on them. It’s not easy to do. Her mind doesn’t usually dwell on things like how a forest looks in the moonlight, or the colour of the sea when seen from Aretuza, or her favourite exhibit in the Oxenfurt Museum showing notable Sorcerers through the centuries that comes with the smug knowledge that Yennefer will one day outshine them all. It’s somehow easier, knowing she’s doing it for Ciri.

Before long, Ciri has dropped off again. Yenn waits anxiously, but the nightmare doesn’t seem to be making a return, tonight at least.

She’s almost tempted to portal away immediately and track down that bastard in the winged helmet. A high-ranking Nilfgaardian in active combat at the Sacking of Cintra won’t be too hard to find.

No. One thing at a time. Besides, she promised Ciri that she could come for that particular adventure, and while the girl does have a staggering natural talent, she will need training before she’s ready for that kind of excursion.

Yenn closes her eyes. Besides, it’s good to have something to look forward to.

By Jaskier’s metric of strange places to wake up, a sofa is so unimaginative as to be utterly boring.

That doesn’t mean that it hasn’t given him a very bad back. And there’s a strange weight on his left arm that’s made it go to sleep. He turns to see what’s pinning him to the cushions and…

Oh.

The Witcher’s eyes flit open.

“Morning?” Jaskier says.

Geralt grunts.

“Could you…”

Geralt looks down at Jaskier’s arm that’s trapped below his back, and sits up slightly so that Jaskier can reclaim his limb.

“Right. Well, would you like… ah, fuck, pins and needles! Don’t you hate when you start to get the feeling back after your arm’s gone to sleep? Or… does that even happen to you? Do Witchers get pins and needles?”

Geralt just stares at him. Jaskier shakes his hand a few more times, then tucks it under his armpit.

Shit. Last night… last night, Jaskier had run his mouth about what happened with Rience, the first time. He hadn’t meant to do that – Geralt didn’t deserve to be burdened with it, would only blame himself for something that was categorically not his fault. Demonstrably not his fault, too – it was Vilgefortz’s fault. Rience had been kind enough to prove that for them.

Jaskier feels his jaw clench at the idea of that sorcerer. The sorcerer who’s after Geralt and Ciri. The gods know he’s not a violent man, but he will absolutely aid and abet whatever nefarious plans Yennefer has doubtless already put in motion against that fucking mage.

Geralt is still staring.

Normally Jaskier has so many thoughts that they have to fight with each other to reach his mouth first. For once, there’s only one thing he wants to say.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Geralt brushes the back of Jaskier’s cheek with his knuckles.

“It’s okay.” The White Wolf says. He hesitates, then speaks with a precision that reminds Jaskier of Geralt’s strikes when fighting a monster. “I’m sorry too.”

Jaskier’s mouth hangs open for a moment. He shakes his head compulsively. “Don’t.”

Geralt frowns, but continues. “I am. I’m sorry for whatever I did that made you see me… like that.”

It’s Jaskier’s turn to frown. “Like what?”

Geralt’s eyes slip closed. “The things you said. You didn’t smell like you were lying when you said them. I must have… I must have done something to make you believe those things. Whatever it was… I’m sorry.”

Jaskier scrambles up onto his knees beside Geralt on the sofa. He can’t quite believe he’s back here in this library that belonged to parents who were benign but never understood him, no matter how hard he tried to make himself heard. It’s okay, he supposes; he’s made a good career out of being loud and eloquent, skills he learned in this house. He’ll make sure he’s understood this time.

He takes Geralt’s face in his hands, gently. The stubble on his face prickles under his fingers. He looks strange without his curtains of white hair framing his face, and Jaskier’s stomach shrivels at the thought that it’s his fault.

Geralt’s hand covers one of Jaskier’s where it holds his cheek. “It’ll grow back,” he says.

Jaskier clears his throat, blinks away the tears that are threatening to gather on his eyelashes. 

“Geralt. Those things I said. I didn’t believe them, and you shouldn’t either. You have to know that. You’re the one who keeps saying I’m always lying when I write. In this instance, you’d be correct. I took what’s true and turned it inside out, or took what is true about other men and made it sound like it was about you, and all the time I thought about how much I hated myself and those stupid fucking guards so I’d smell like I meant it… but none of it was the truth of you, Geralt.”

They’re so close. So fucking close. Jaskier can feel every one of Geralt’s breaths tickling his skin.

“What is the truth then, Jaskier? What you put in your songs?”

Jaskier risks a half-smile.

“No, not that either. What kind of bard would I be if I sang the truth? I’d never be able to hold my head up on Oxenfurt again. No, what I sing is what the public needs to hear.”

Geralt shifts on the sofa. It moves his thigh into contact with Jaskier’s knees where he’s kneeling on the cushions. He doesn’t move away again.

“Then what is the truth, Jaskier?”

Jaskier smiles. He puts his mouth close to the cartilage of Geralt’s ear, feels the Witcher shiver at the brush of his teeth against the skin. 

“The truth is that I see you, Geralt of Rivia. You can’t hide from me. The first day I met you, you gave all your coin to a bunch of elves who had spent the last few hours knocking you unconscious and beating the shit out of you. You don’t charge half as much as you should for your work, and you won’t take any money at all if the people you’re helping can’t afford it. You miss your brothers more than you’ll ever admit for three-quarters of the year, but by the end of winter you’ll practically run down the mountain – I get it, Lambert’s a lot. You read a lot of high-concept books because Yenn’s ridiculously clever, and you think that you don’t deserve her but you might be able to one day. You also hide demijohns of vodka behind those same high-concept books, because deep down you’re a man of good taste.

“You claim not to get involved, but you actually do all the time. Just like you claim to want no one, but I think you actually do, all the time, but for some reason you think you don’t deserve to have nice things. And the truth is, Geralt, that you deserve to have people, have friends. You do have people who care for you. I wish you could understand how difficult it is to be one of those people, and be constantly told that it’s not what you want. Because I can’t help it. The others can’t, either. We care about you. We love you. And we’ll fight with you. You’re used to doing things on your own, but you don’t have to any more. And there’s nothing you can do about it, so you may as well accept it. 

“You have love, Geralt of Rivia. Because you are a good person who deserves it.”

When he pulls back, the Witcher’s expression is so open, and so soft, that Jaskier worries for a moment. He’s never seen Geralt with that look before.

“Geralt? Are you alright?” he tries.

“I’m sorry for what I said on the mountain,” Geralt answers.

Oh. Jaskier hadn’t been expecting that. He shifts into a normal sitting position and glances around the room, taking in the books piled on shelves and tables waiting to be catalogued, the morning sun streaming in through the window. At the dent in the cushion next to him that he has a fuzzy, half-asleep memory of Yennefer leaving as she slept curled into his side.

“It’s okay,” he answers.

“Jaskier.”

He tries not to look at Geralt. 

“Mmm?”

“Look at me.”

Jaskier manages to hold his resolve for about three seconds because who is he kidding? He can’t ignore the Witcher any more now than he could that first day in Posada. He looks.

“You didn’t deserve it. I took it out on you, and I shouldn’t have. Forgive me?”

Jaskier laughs nervously. “Wow, I think that might be the most words I’ve ever heard you say in one go. Are you alright? Did you sprain something?”

“Jaskier.” The Witcher’s voice is so soft.  
“I forgive you,” Jaskier says clearly.

“Hn,” The edges of Geralt’s mouth perk up slightly in a way that, for him, is a grin. He reaches out and, painfully carefully, taps a message into Jaskier’s forearm. Three quick taps, a pause, repeated twice more to make three times in total.

Jaskier grins back. “I love you, too.”

He doesn’t know which of them closes the distance between them, or if they both move at the same time. But he does know that Geralt’s lips are soft and gentle against his own, and they feel better than they have any right to. Jaskier winds his arms around Geralt’s neck and kisses back. Geralt seems to grow in confidence at this, deepening the kiss and setting a slow and steady pace that seems like it could go on all day, which is fine with Jaskier. He’d do this for the rest of eternity if he could.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the end, sort of?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i make no apology for how tooth-rotting this is.

The sun lancing through the gap in the curtains would be beautiful if it weren’t for the fact that it was hitting Geralt right in the eyelids, which had been closed in sleep.

Geralt screws his eyes up and turns to bury his head against Jaskier’s shoulder. At least they’d slept on the bed this time. Geralt has nothing against the library sofa, but the library sofa seems to have something against him judging by the way he’d woken yesterday with every joint aching.

Geralt’s movement causes an irritated sigh that definitely didn’t come from Jaskier. He cracks an eye to see Yennefer on the other side of the bard, acting as Jaskier’s big spoon. Geralt is too sleepy to stop the smile that creeps onto his face.

He should get up, he knows. He needs to check on Roach. He should train.

He closes his eyes and lets Jaskier’s warmth soak into him.

When Geralt has eventually torn himself away from the bed, to the sound of much grumbling from both his inner thoughts and a disgruntled bard, he does go and see to Roach. He can see she’s been kept very well by the stablehands while Geralt was imprisoned. They were probably terrified into extra care by Jaskier and/or Yenn. Geralt would feel guilty, but seeing Roach well fed with a sleek coat and well-groomed mane steals any regret he might have borne.

The stables are silent, the ostler and her apprentice having made themselves scarce when they saw Geralt approaching. He doesn’t mind; he prefers to be alone with Roach. Other people don’t know how to deal with her, and it’s tiresome to always be pulling people out of the way so they don’t get angry when she nips them, or stamps on their feet. She has excellent aim for where to land a hoof.

The late morning sun warms the air, soothing against his skin. Geralt is pleased that it smells clean here – or, as clean as a stable ever smells. The straw is certainly less soiled than the stuff he had to sleep on in his cell underneath the house…

No. Geralt refuses that thought.

Roach bumps her head against his chest when he steps into the stall with her. “Hey Roach,” he whispers, stroking her neck.

She doesn’t need it, but he gets out his brushes and starts grooming her anyway. After a while, she nickers and stamps her foot in a meaningful way.

“I know, Roach. You’re restless. You have all the food you could want here, a comfy place to sleep and people to clean up after you that aren’t… well, me. But you’re ready, aren’t you? You know we have to...”

Roach turns her head to regard him with one large, brown eye. She snorts, and nibbles at his collar.

“You’re right, Roach. Like always.”

He finishes his grooming and sneaks her a few sugar cubes he’d snaffled from the breakfast table. She takes them from his palm eagerly, snuffling at his hands and pockets for more when she’s done. When Geralt leaves the stall, she tries to follow him.

He closes the door on her gently, scratching at her mane to soothe her.

“Soon, Roach. I promise.”

Geralt wanders back to the house. He finds them in the library again, Yenn and Ciri poring over some tome while Jaskier sits on the windowsill wearing his composition face and strums a tune that Geralt doesn’t recognise. That’s jarring; once upon a time, Geralt knew all of Jaskier’s songs. Geralt closes that feeling down. 

Yenn answers Ciri’s frequent questions carefully and thoroughly. From his spot on the windowsill, Jaskier also throws out the occasional queries – about a rhyme, or what they think of a line, or even about the magic that’s being discussed. Yennefer’s answers to these are decidedly less patient, but Geralt catches the smile she means to hide behind the curtain of her hair where it slips down over her face.

Geralt stands in the door way and watches and, oh, his battered heart. This scene is perfect, this moment is golden and he’s going to spoil it. The love is swelling up in him again and it’s going to wash him away and he wants it to, but he can’t let it. He’s going to ruin this, and it’s the last thing he wants to do but he can’t not do it and remain himself…

He opens his mouth to speak the words that will scorch the earth.

“We need to split up, and soon.” Yennefer says before he can utter a sound.

“Uh… yes.” She took the words from him. He narrows his eyes, trying to work out if she’d read the thought in his mind. But his medallion had remained still enough at his chest, only emitting the baseline hum it always did when around a sorcerer. 

Oh, Geralt realises. She doesn’t want him. 

It’s nothing he didn’t know already, of course. It shouldn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt, he tells himself, steadfastly ignoring the void that’s opened in his chest. He’s fine.

Jaskier sets down his lute gently, his composition face replaced by his serious face. Geralt has only seen that one a handful of times, and its appearance now suddenly makes it hard to swallow.

Jaskier doesn’t want him either. The breach that is definitely not inside him widens, becomes almost all-consuming. 

Geralt sees Ciri, sitting at the table surrounded by tens of books of magic, looking between the adults in the room with a worried frown. He breathes. The pain is unbearable, but he’ll bear it for her. He’ll keep her safe, no matter what else happens or who else leaves him.

“Ciri…” he starts. He needs to send her away, he knows. She shouldn’t hear some of what they’re about to say. It’ll frighten her, and the gods know she’s been through enough already.

“No,” Ciri tells him.

“What?” Geralt might just fall apart after all.

“No,” Ciri continues. “That’s the face you use when you’re about to tell me to go away so you can all talk about things. Well, I’m not a child. And you’re talking about things that I’ll have to do too. So I want to stay.”

She folds her arms and raises her chin stubbornly, green eyes flashing. Yenn reaches over and smooths the princess’s hair, her expression impossibly proud. Jaskier is predictably delighted; he adores anyone who stands up to authority, especially Geralt’s authority. He’ll get no help from either of them.

He sighs, sits. “Fine. What do you have in mind, Yenn?”

Jaskier sits at the table too. Yennefer gestures and the books are cleared, leaving them free to see each other across the desk.

“Zelda’s already gone back to Redania to report to Dijkstra. She’s not going to say anything about you and Ciri, but she is going to reveal Vilgefortz’s motivations. Which means time is about to run out on our element of surprise. You need to take Ciri to Kaer Morhen. Even since its sacking, the keep is basically impregnable without an army and several powerful mages.” Yennefer says with a smile.

Jaskier reaches over and circles her wrist with his musician’s hand. “Of course, this powerful mage would never attack the keep. Would she, Yenn?” 

Geralt knows Jaskier’s hands well. He can feel the ghost of Jaskier’s grip on Yenn’s wrist on his own, the lute-forged calluses rough in contrast with the soft skin of the inner wrist. He shakes the feeling off.

Yenn raises her eyebrows, but she doesn’t pull away from Jaskier’s touch. She answers with a smile in her voice. “Never say never, Jaskier.” 

Jaskier laughs, squeezes her wrist once more, and lets her go. “You’d have to get through me first.”

“Fine by me.” She pauses for a moment to give Jaskier a chance to pantomime outrage and hurt, clutching imaginary pearls at his throat, before continuing. “Anyway. You’ll go to Kaer Morhen, where it’s safe. We’re going to hunt Vilgefortz.”

“I’m sorry, ‘we’?” Geralt asks.

“Yes. I’m going too,” Jaskier says helpfully.

“No you’re not. You may have been able to handle Rience in your own house, just barely. But you can’t go up against a mage like Vilgefortz!” Geralt realises that his words aren’t coming out as impassively as he’d planned, the alarm bleeding into his words like ink spilled on a page.

Jaskier opens his mouth to argue, but Yennefer gets there first.

“I wouldn’t underestimate Jaskier, Geralt. Despite how the way he looks, and the way he acts, and the… well, everything about him really… he’s tougher than he seems.”

Jaskier chuckles. “Thanks? I think?”

“I don’t…” Geralt begins.

“The man suggested we perform necromancy the first time I had a real conversation with him, Geralt. Anyone willing to risk the wrath of the Brotherhood – and, more importantly, me – to get what they want can surely manage a mage who couldn’t find anyone better than Rience to use as a tool. Besides, I’ll be there.”

Geralt opens his mouth again, but finds he really can’t argue with that. Yennefer is more than capable of killing anyone she deems a threat… or who annoys her one too many times. Maybe he should worry for Jaskier on this mission, after all.

Jaskier reaches over and pulls a piece of straw out from where it’s got caught in the hair that is fast growing to replace the mane that was shaved off Geralt’s head, a few days and a million years ago. 

“I’ll be fine, Geralt.” he says. He speaks with a conviction that almost makes Geralt believe him. Like it’s a promise from Fate. He catches Jaskier’s hand in his own, rubbing a thumb along the bard’s knuckles without breaking eye contact, willing the words to be true. Destiny is horseshit, but if it keeps the people at this table safe…

“What’s necromancy?” Ciri asks, shattering the moment.

“Talking to the dead, ugly one. I’ll explain later.”

Geralt lets go of Jaskier’s hand, who takes it back slowly. As if he wants Geralt to capture it again.

“You should set off at first light,” Yenn says to Geralt and Ciri. “You’ve got a long way to travel.”

“Why don’t you make a portal to take us there?” Ciri asks. Geralt feels the side of his mouth tug upwards in a smile that he sees mirrored on the faces of the bard and the sorceress.

“Because, nosy one, portals can be traced. They leave a signature and someone talented enough, who knows where the portal was cast, can re-open it by studying the traces left behind. And we can’t have anyone knowing where you are, much less opening a portal and stepping right into Kaer Morhen’s reception room.” Yenn smooths at Ciri’s hair again. “Sit up straighter, child. Remember what Jaskier told you in your ‘singing’ lesson earlier. That was a good question.”

“And where will you go first?” Geralt asks. Maybe he can drop Ciri off with his brothers and then head out again, find Jaskier and Yennefer and help them…

“It’s best if you don’t know that, Geralt.” Jaskier says gently.

Geralt feels his brow crease. “Why? You don’t want my help?”

“No, no, it’s not that!” Jaskier protests, though the effect is spoiled by the fact that Geralt sees Yennefer nodding out of the corner of his eye. “It’s just that, the less people know, the less likely it is to get out.”

Geralt makes a face designed to say: oh really? In my experience, if Jaskier knows, everyone knows.

Jaskier seems to interpret the look. “Don’t look like that, Witcher. How long have we known each other? And you never once suspected I worked for Dijkstra. Don’t worry. I never told the Service anything about you.”

Geralt’s mouth opens, then snaps shut. He has no comeback.

“Alright then. That’s settled. In the morning, Geralt and Ciri will head to their destination, and we to ours. Once we’ve done that, we’ll rendezvous with you at the keep.”

Geralt’s head jerks up like a dog catching a scent. He wants to ask, more than he’s wanted to ask anything in his life, but he doesn’t dare. The words stutter and stop against the back of his teeth and he can’t make himself say it…

“You’ll come and find us again once you’re done?” Ciri asks, sunshine colouring her voice and back ramrod straight. “And we’ll stay together?”

“Of course, ugly duckling. It’s a promise.” Yenn turns so her violet eyes meet Geralt’s. Geralt feels a cornflower-blue gaze resting on him too. “We’ll find you again.”

“Okay,” Ciri says happily, apparently content with the plan. She scurries off to locate the book she’d been reading that Yenn had magicked away at the start of the meeting. Yenn and Jaskier are still looking at him. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s so full that if he moves he’ll overflow.

After a long moment, Jaskier gets up and returns to his perch on the windowsill, taking up his lute once more. A book appears in Yenn’s hands which she starts annotating with a quill and ink that weren’t there a moment ago.

A few chords ring out through the library. Jaskier mutters something to himself about the key and scribbles something in his own notebook.

“It sounds different,” Geralt says before he can stop himself, and because it’s easier to think about music than… whatever just passed between them.

Jaskier looks up. “Sorry?”

Geralt shifts uncomfortably, but he can’t back away now. From across the table, though she’s still writing, he feels Yenn’s attention focused on him as well.

“You… your ballads. They normally sound… the same?” Geralt searches his memory for conversations had months ago during long evenings in nondescript tavern rooms, or across a campfire when coin had been scarce. Jaskier patiently explaining about maintaining a consistent voice and calls and responses and echoes across a genre. He’d said that each of the songs in the White Wolf canon could be taken individually and enjoyed, but anyone with a discerning ear who heard two or more would hear the way they slotted together. That they belonged in the same pack. “This one sounds different. To the other ones you’ve written. Like… like it’s a different story, rather than a new chapter?”

Jaskier barks a laugh. “Really? I’m surprised you’ve paid enough attention to my songs to know that.”

He means that, Geralt realises. Jaskier thinks Geralt doesn’t listen to his songs. Geralt finds that this sits uncomfortably with him, and refuses to examine why. “I listen.”

“Well. In that case. This one sounds different because it’s not from the White Wolf catalogue. It’s from my Series on the Sorceress.”

Geralt flicks his eyes to Yenn. She’s still apparently engrossed in her work, but there is a very smug set to her mouth that Geralt’s not seen a dusty tome provoke before.

“And you’re alright with this?” He asks her.

In answer, she sets down her quill, rising to takes a seat beside Jaskier on the window ledge. She slings an arm around him and kisses him on the cheek, leaving the brand of her lipstick behind.

“What’s wrong, Geralt? Jealous that he’s my bard now?”

Geralt might be, if the joyful look on Jaskier’s face wasn’t so bright. If Yenn’s satisfaction wasn’t so alien and so beautiful. And if what she’d just done wasn’t one of the hottest things he’d ever seen.

Jaskier laughs, setting his lute down again. He takes Yenn’s hand in one of his and pulls her along across the room until he can take Geralt’s in his other. “It’s ‘our’ bard. I can write songs about two people. About my Witcher, and about my Sorceress.”

Geralt has to blink back the tears that suddenly spring to his eyes, burning. He grins at Jaskier, then looks to Yenn. Making the movement gentle as he can, he holds out his hand to her, closing exactly half the difference between them.

After an agonisingly long moment that he suspects she draws out just to torture him, she meets him halfway. Their hands join and complete the perfect triangle that they’ve made in the middle of the library.

Jaskier grins, rocking up onto the balls of his feet and bouncing as if too excited to stay still. “Oh, thank fuck. I thought that might not work!”

“Jaskier,” Yenn and Geralt say at the exact same time, with a matching warning tone in their voices.

“Ooh, this will be fun!” Jaskier crows. “You know, seeing as we’ve all got a long journey in the morning… we should probably get an early night?”

They still want him. For some unfathomable reason, despite everything he is and everything he’s done, they still want him. They’re going to be apart… but then they’ll come back together.

Without meaning to, Geralt tightens his grip on both of them. Jaskier laughs.

“I’ll take that as a yes?”

Geralt leads Roach out of the stable in the grey pre-dawn. Ciri is leaning against Yennefer, rubbing her eyes but uncomplaining about the early morning. Yenn has one arm around Ciri’s shoulders, and one around Jaskier’s waist as he blows his nose noisily into a handkerchief.

On seeing Geralt’s readiness, Yenn kneels down in front of Ciri.

“Tuck your shirt in, Ciri. How you present yourself is important. And remember what I taught you, what you learned from Jaskier. If anyone comes near you, you know what to do.”

“Yes, Yennefer,” Ciri’s answer is cut short when she’s pulled into a bone-crushing embrace. 

“I’ll see you soon, my ugly duckling,” Yenn promises into her hair.

Ciri hugs her back fiercely. Then she hugs Jaskier, who begins to cry even harder, and takes Roach’s reins. Geralt surrenders Roach to her, crossing the courtyard to the two of only a precious handful of people on the Continent who matter.

“See you at Kaer Morhen?” Geralt asks.

“I said so, didn’t I?” Yenn answers, almost drowning out Jaskier’s gentle “Of course.”

Jaskier throws her a look and takes Geralt’s hands. “Wild kikimores couldn’t keep us away.”

Jaskier draws them both in, and they become one large tangle of limbs and hair as they hold each other. Geralt inhales deeply and tries to commit their scents to memory: lilac and lute strings and gooseberries and chamomile and home.

“Geralt?” Ciri calls. “The sun’s almost up.”

With a sigh, he releases them but kept hold of one of their hands each. He taps both of his thumbs against their palms: three taps, a pause, and repeated twice more to make three in total.

“I love you too,” Jaskier whispers. Yenn’s lips don’t move, but Geralt heards her put the words into his head anyway.

He swings up onto Roach behind Ciri and starts to ride away from Lettenhove. The void inside him opens up again, but Geralt consoles himself with the knowledge that he’s not riding away from them. He’s riding towards where they will meet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading to the end! 
> 
> i may come back and write Jaskier and Yenn hunting down Vilgefortz, and maybe Yenn and Ciri's refemge quest against Cahir because those lads have it coming.
> 
> in this universe, Dijkstra is going to come to the end that's hinted in the books when he visits King Esterad (spoiler warning: death by a thousand ninjas). and we all know who would have planned and led that mission... *cough* Zelda *cough*


End file.
